A powerful tale of revenge and perseverance in the face of danger.
In Dossett’s historical novel, a teenage girl in the Prohibition era vows to avenge the murder of her brother by tequila smugglers.
Sarita Gibson lives on the family ranch, La Barroneña, with her ailing father John and her younger brother JJ. She’s somewhat adrift after her mother’s death, unable to graduate school in San Antonio as she had planned and barred from fully devoting herself to working on the ranch by her father, who doubts her capability on the basis of her sex. One day, a catastrophe forever changes her life: When two tequila smugglers rob Sarita and JJ of four of their horses, JJ is shot and dies in his sister’s arms. John turns to the local sheriff and the Texas Rangers for justice, but both entities are too preoccupied to be of any meaningful assistance, a predicament that only exacerbates John’s “frail heart.” To exact vengeance on JJ’s behalf and prove to her father that she can take over the ranch (John is poised to sell the spread to Burr Archer and his “greedy white teeth”), Sarita sets off in search of the killer, Javier Salsito de Ortega, a ruthless bandit and smuggler. Her resolve is stirringly captured by the author: “JJ had not been peaceful in death. His face had brimmed with confusion and fear. He’d had no chance; his life had been taken, running out of him like sand through a funnel. He had died trying to save me. I couldn’t give up so easily.” The plot is aggressively paced, packed with vividly rendered action, but this is more than just a tale of adventure and revenge; Dossett astutely captures the near lawlessness along the border at that time, a circumstance only worsened by the prohibition against alcohol. Sarita is a deftly drawn character encompassing complexity, toughness, and vulnerability. This novel will please readers in search of a thrilling plot that is thoughtfully executed.
A powerful tale of revenge and perseverance in the face of danger.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798891323131
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
