An enticing tale and an effective introduction to an expansive fictional world.
In Arriaza’s supernatural debut novel, a doctor aids a wounded stranger who shows up on her property and then faces a wave of otherworldly creatures.
Dr. Melisa Castro plans to spend her vacation in bed with Chris Kosmatka, her fiance and the father of her son-to-be. But while she waits for Chris to return from work, someone else drops by—a man who rolls down a hill, right into her LA backyard. As she tends to him, she’s shocked by his large, open, but bloodless chest wound, and when she touches it, she has a vision of the man restrained and someone stabbing him. Elsewhere in the city, the enigmatic Ranald, who perpetually wears a leather jacket and sunglasses, is trying to track down a stolen dagger. The blade had the power to kill a powerful individual known as the Hunter, whose now-missing body was its last resting place. The Hunter could also be linked to vicious animal attacks that cops (including Melisa’s brother, Walter) are investigating. As her visions continue, Melisa also learns that she’s marrying into a family that hides a dark secret. Arriaza’s entertaining tale features a few traditional supernatural beings that readers will recognize, but he employs their familiarity to the story’s advantage, simplifying the plot by cutting down on unnecessary back story. This helps the book maintain a steady momentum, particularly in the brisk final act, which is filled with inevitable confrontations. The real highlights, however, are the characters’ constantly shifting alliances. Some of the descriptions are repetitive (the word “massive,” for instance, is used too often), but they detail the action in concise, clipped sentences: “She can see his eyes. Beautiful blue eyes. He is screaming something; she can’t understand it.” Much of the explanation of what’s really going on, including ties to religion, is reserved for the end, and it’s coherent while also leaving plenty to explore in future planned volumes.
An enticing tale and an effective introduction to an expansive fictional world.Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9987933-0-6
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Rio Dulce Books
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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