Dripping in satire and all-consuming desire, this is more about the atmosphere and less about the drama that unfolds.
A young actress is thrust by ambition into the orbit of old money Hollywood and discovers, unsurprisingly, the dark side to fame and fortune.
“In retrospect, if a man says run, you should listen. I didn’t, of course.” And so the ominous tone of this modern gothic is set from the start, as Blake’s heroine, struggling actress Anya Morris, puts her wheels in motion toward a predetermined demise. Surrounded by the billowing heat and existential threat of the Santa Ana winds, Anya is itching to land a part, any part, that will move her out of the apartment complex owned by her Filipino mother, away from disapproving eyes and the guilt of wanting more than to work at the family store. Fate comes swirling through the door in the form of Teddy Finch, a high school acquaintance and Hollywood nepo baby who harbors a social media obsession with Anya. She’s quick to fit into whatever role necessary to get what she needs from him—“A prayer: If this dream goes unrealized, it won’t be because of anything I didn’t do”—and soon finds herself on his arm at a charity gala. There she meets the charmingly cynical Emmanuelle de Witt, who offers what Anya’s always dreamed of, namely access and opportunity. Anya visits the de Witt mansion and finds herself thrown into a scene of debauchery and opulence, with Emmanuelle whispering promises in her ear, as long as she does “[her] job,” one yet to be defined, but which now holds the key to her future. She must watch someone named Julian and make sure he’s never out of sight. “Severe epilepsy,” according to whispers, but the truth is much darker. Blake is fantastic at creating a foreboding atmosphere à la Megan Abbott, using the California weather, the constant hum of traffic, and the toxicity of ambition to produce a cloying, suffocating environment that matches the sickness consuming everyone in the de Witt mansion. While the gothic undertones are a fun nod to the likes of Jane Eyre, the grotesque secrets of Hollywood’s finest are neither very original nor surprising, as we’re set up to expect the worst from Page 1.
Dripping in satire and all-consuming desire, this is more about the atmosphere and less about the drama that unfolds.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2026
ISBN: 9781250368935
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An addictive psychological thriller.
When a mysterious novel appears on her bedside table, a successful documentary filmmaker finds herself face to face with a secret that threatens to unravel life as she knows it.
Catherine Ravenscroft has built a dream life, or close to it: the devoted husband, the house in London, the award-winning career as a documentary filmmaker. And though she’s never quite bonded with her 25-year-old son the way she’d hoped, he’s doing fine—there are worse things than being an electronics salesman. But when she stumbles across a sinister novel called The Perfect Stranger—no one’s quite sure how it came into the house—Catherine sees herself in its pages, living out scenes from her past she’d hoped to forget. It’s a threat—but from whom? And why now, 20 years after the fact? Meanwhile, Stephen Brigstocke, a retired teacher, widowed and in pain, is desperate to exact revenge on Catherine and make her pay for what happened all those years ago. The story is told in alternating chapters, Catherine's in the third-person and Stephen's in the first, as the two orbit each other, predator and prey, and the novel moves between the past and the present to paint a portrait of two troubled families with trauma bubbling under the surface. As their lives become increasingly entangled, Stephen’s obsession grows, Catherine’s world crumbles, and it becomes clear that—in true thriller form—everything may not be as it seems. But how much destruction must be wrought before the truth comes out? And when it does, will there be anything left to salvage? While the long buildup to the big reveal begins to drag, Knight’s elegant plot and compelling (if not unexpected) characters keep the heart of the novel beating even when the pacing falters. Atmospheric and twisting and ripe for TV adaptation, this debut novel never strays far from convention, but that doesn’t make it any less of a page-turner.
An addictive psychological thriller.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236225-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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