A vivid paranormal mystery that will haunt readers long after the final page.
In Banerjee’s supernatural thriller, family devotion collides with dark magic.
Narrated in part by Priya, a mother-turned-spirit struggling to protect her children from beyond, the story (set in India and the United States) follows Leda, a compassionate detective and friend of Priya’s children, and Sonya, Priya’s daughter, a young woman caught in the lure of dark forces. Their fates intersect in the wake of a malevolent curse tied to a fiendish sorcerer named Dev—also referred to as “the fiend”—with a distinctive familiar (“An ash bat, a bat made of ash, was here a little while ago,” Leda warns early on). The tension escalates when a mark on Leda’s wrist begins to move like a living bat, signaling Dev’s growing power. Her attempts to help lead her into increasingly perilous encounters (there’s a chilling moment when she awakens after an attack: “Where am I?” she gasps, blood streaking her face). Priya—watching helplessly as a spirit—laments this growing nightmare plaguing her children and the woman trying to save them, asserting “[Dev] must be crushed.” Sonya, once bright and loving, becomes mysteriously entangled with Dev, her loyalties shifting as she acts under an ominous influence. (During one yoga session, she is described as “expressionless, like she knew what she was doing but was remorseless.”) Her transformation leaves those around her questioning whether she has been corrupted or is sacrificing herself to protect others. The author grounds the narrative in the quiet grief people carry with them. In one affecting sequence, Leda’s husband, Patrick, reveals a devastating heartbreak: “We lost our baby.” The novel’s emotional moments reinforce its core theme of love persevering despite supernatural cruelty. Banerjee’s prose is vivid and fast-paced, rich with cultural details and suspense. The characters’ motivations can grow tangled as the supernatural plot thickens, but the story’s ingenuity, heartfelt relationships, and narrative ambition combine to deliver a compelling and original paranormal thriller.
A vivid paranormal mystery that will haunt readers long after the final page.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9798274633260
Page Count: 318
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.
In this long-awaited fifth installment of Shannon’s Bone Season series, the threat to the clairvoyant community spreads like a plague across Europe.
After extending her fight against the Republic of Scion to Paris, Paige Mahoney, leader of London’s clairvoyant underworld and a spy for the resistance movement, finds herself further outside her comfort zone when she wakes up in a foreign place with no recollection of getting there. More disturbing than her last definitive memory, in which her ally-turned-lover Arcturus seems to betray her, is that her dreamscape—the very soul of her clairvoyance—has been altered, as if there’s a veil shrouding both her memories and abilities. Paige manages to escape and learns she’s been missing and presumed dead for six months. Even more shocking is that she’s somehow outside of Scion’s borders, in the free world where clairvoyants are accepted citizens. She gets in touch with other resistance fighters and journeys to Italy to reconnect with the Domino Programme intelligence network. In stark contrast to the potential of life in the free world is the reality that Scion continues to stretch its influence, with Norway recently falling and Italy a likely next target. Paige is enlisted to discover how Scion is bending free-world political leaders to its will, but before Paige can commit to her mission, she has her own mystery to solve: Where in the world is Arcturus? Paige’s loyalty to Arcturus is tested as she decides how much to trust in their connection and how much information to reveal to the Domino Programme about the Rephaite—the race of immortals from the Netherworld, Arcturus’ people—and their connection to the founding of Scion, as well as the presence of clairvoyant abilities on Earth. While the book is impressively multilayered, the matter-of-fact way in which details from the past are sprinkled throughout will have readers constantly flipping to the glossary. As the series’ scope and the implications of the war against Scion expand, Shannon’s narrative style reads more action-thriller than fantasy. Paige’s powers as a dreamwalker are rarely used here, but when clairvoyance is at play, the story shines.
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781639733965
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.
Hung out to dry by the elders who betrayed them, a squad of pregnant teens fights back with old magic.
Hendrix has a flair for applying inventive hooks to horror, and this book has a good one, chock-full with shades of V.C. Andrews, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Foxfire, to name a few. Our narrator, Neva Craven, is 15 and pregnant, a fate worse than death in the American South circa 1970. She’s taken by force to Wellwood House in Florida, a secretive home for unwed mothers where she’s given the name Fern. She’ll have the baby secretly and give it up for adoption, whether she likes it or not. Under the thumb of the house’s cruel mistress, Miss Wellwood, and complicit Dr. Vincent, Neva forges cautious alliance with her fellow captives—a new friend, Zinnia; budding revolutionary Rose; and young Holly, raped and impregnated by the very family minister slated to adopt her child. All seems lost until the arrival of a mysterious bookmobile and its librarian, Miss Parcae, who gives the girls an actual book of spells titled How To Be a Groovy Witch. There’s glee in seeing the powerless granted some well-deserved payback, but Hendrix never forgets his sweet spot, lacing the story with body horror and unspeakable cruelties that threaten to overwhelm every little victory. In truth, it’s not the paranormal elements that make this blast from the past so terrifying—although one character evolves into a suitably scary antagonist near the end—but the unspeakable, everyday atrocities leveled at children like these. As the girls lose their babies one by one, they soon devote themselves to secreting away Holly and her child. They get some help late in the game but for the most part they’re on their own, trapped between forces of darkness and society’s merciless judgement.
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780593548981
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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