A quiet yet mesmerizing story reveals how a family was impacted by a curse over the centuries.
A woman works to cast out the evil witch haunting her inherited home in the second book of Roberts’ Lost Bride Trilogy, following Inheritance (2023).
Sonya MacTavish inherited a mansion in a small coastal Maine town, only to discover it was haunted by ghosts known as the lost brides. In 1806, a malevolent witch named Hester Dobbs wanted the mansion and its owner for herself, so she killed his bride on their wedding night and then sealed the curse by killing herself. The first woman in each subsequent generation was killed by the curse on her wedding day. Dobbs has become a poltergeist that controls part of the mansion, while the rest is inhabited by the ghosts of her victims. Roberts follows her typical trilogy plotting: In this middle book, the forces of good retrench, gather information, and build their forces, saving the final showdown for the last volume. Sonya builds a small cadre of supporters around her here, including her cousin, best friend, and lover. Inside the mansion, the foursome discovers a magic mirror that shows them scenes from the past, but as family members, Sonya and her cousin can also travel through the mirror. On the other side, they become ghosts, able to experience the murders of the brides as if they were present in the room. Sonya and her friends treat these visits as fact-finding missions, hoping to use the information to cast out Dobbs and end the curse once and for all. Meanwhile, Dobbs builds her own power, hoping to intimidate and frighten Sonya away. Roberts is a masterful storyteller, weaving together the tales of Sonya’s ancestors, not only the murdered brides but also desperate survivors who did monstrous things to avoid the curse. It’s a fascinating look at the destructive power of ambition, greed, and weakness while Sonya marshals the power of creativity, community, and togetherness.
A quiet yet mesmerizing story reveals how a family was impacted by a curse over the centuries.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9781250288776
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2026 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.
