An atmospheric story of war and loss.
A Japanese soldier encounters unforeseen enemies in Aleja’s supernatural war novel.
Seventeen-year-old Yoshida Takeshi hopes that joining the Japanese army will free him from the poverty and abuse of his aunt and uncle’s home. Perhaps by serving his country, he can make enough money to support himself and his younger sister Yuki. The only complication: There’s a war going on—the Japanese empire against the United States—and his service may require him to die honorably for the emperor. He and his unit are sent to the island of Omiyajima (previously known as Guam), a beautiful paradise—at least until the war takes its toll. Bombs flatten the jungle and his comrades commit atrocities against the local Chamorro people. Takeshi participates as little as he can manage without attracting attention to himself, but he knows what they are doing is wrong—and some hidden force on the island appears to agree. Invisible enemies attack the Japanese soldiers from the forest, leaving strange marks on those able to escape. With American battleships threatening from the ocean and mysterious attacks coming from the island, Takeshi turns to a Japanese-speaking Chamorro named Elena for help. But is it too late for those who have offended the spirit ancestors of Guam? Aleja’s smooth prose expertly builds tension, as here when Takeshi gets his first taste of the forest threat: “The trees began to move around Takeshi again. The strain in his eyes caused him to rub the water from them. Each time he did so, something seemed to encircle him, watching him. It moved through the branches like a snake, not like a man.” Not exactly a mystery or a horror yarn, the story powerfully explores the tremendous capacity of humans to be inhumane, even outside the context of the war. Aleja cleverly tells the story of Japanese-occupied Guam in an unexpected way that captures the tragic destruction of militarism.
An atmospheric story of war and loss.Pub Date: July 11, 2024
ISBN: 9798990039025
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Taotao-Ta Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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