Haunting and lyrical, understated and true.
A couple mourning the death of their teenage son in a freak accident confront past secrets while facing the uncertain future of their marriage in McCluskey’s debut.
Kat and Scott are struggling to navigate a world made brittle by grief. Kat, unable to cope with most day-to-day tasks, resents the way Scott, a corporate lawyer, buries himself in work to escape the pain. When she has to accompany him to an evening event, she's shocked to discover that his new client is a rich widow who used to be one of her own best friends. It’s been 20 years since Sarah Cherrington cut a swath through the conservative Catholic school where she met and dazzled young Kat; the two were inseparable, drawn to one another as misfits despite being complete opposites. But a dramatic falling out when they were in college broke up their friendship, and they haven’t communicated since. Sarah, once a poor orphan, has realized her greatest dream: she is extraordinarily wealthy, and her business acumen and ruthless demands to get what she wants make her a desirable but demanding client for Scott. Meanwhile, Sarah reaches out to Kat, offering her a second chance at motherhood through her connection to an adoption charity. When Scott denies Kat’s request to consider adopting, the fragile shell of their marriage begins to crack. This novel raises comparisons to Gone Girl and some of the other recent stories about characters who aren’t who they seem, but McCluskey’s beautiful prose elevates it above most of them. Her descriptions of both place and people are lush: "Kat woke early, as the sun was rising and the light changing from gray to gold....The gardens, with their fine morning mist, looked enchanted. She stood still for a while, breathing it all in, until she noticed that the patio doors were open and, as she watched, Sarah, in a cream-silk shirt and loose pants, came out." In contrast, the dialogue is simple and true. Above all, this is an exploration of the cost of grief and how it isolates even those who share the same loss. But McCluskey also suggests that everyone has the capacity to find the way through this lonely darkness and reach healing on the other side.
Haunting and lyrical, understated and true.Pub Date: July 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-503-95306-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Little A
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Too much drama at the end detracts from a finely wrought and subtle conundrum.
Ware (In A Dark, Dark Wood, 2015) offers up a classic “paranoid woman” story with a modern twist in this tense, claustrophobic mystery.
Days before departing on a luxury cruise for work, travel journalist Lo Blacklock is the victim of a break-in. Though unharmed, she ends up locked in her own room for several hours before escaping; as a result, she is unable to sleep. By the time she comes onboard the Aurora, Lo is suffering from severe sleep deprivation and possibly even PTSD, so when she hears a big splash from the cabin next door in the middle of the night, “the kind of splash made by a body hitting water,” she can’t prove to security that anything violent has actually occurred. To make matters stranger, there's no record of any passenger traveling in the cabin next to Lo’s, even though Lo herself saw a woman there and even borrowed makeup from her before the first night’s dinner party. Reeling from her own trauma, and faced with proof that she may have been hallucinating, Lo continues to investigate, aided by her ex-boyfriend Ben (who's also writing about the cruise), fighting desperately to find any shred of evidence that she may be right. The cast of characters, their conversations, and the luxurious but confining setting all echo classic Agatha Christie; in fact, the structure of the mystery itself is an old one: a woman insists murder has occurred, everyone else says she’s crazy. But Lo is no wallflower; she is a strong and determined modern heroine who refuses to doubt the evidence of her own instincts. Despite this successful formula, and a whole lot of slowly unraveling tension, the end is somehow unsatisfying. And the newspaper and social media inserts add little depth.
Too much drama at the end detracts from a finely wrought and subtle conundrum.Pub Date: July 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-3293-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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