A taut rendering of one woman’s fight against Big Oil.
In Grayhall’s novel, an intrepid physician takes on petrochemical corporations polluting her patients’ air.
Victoria “Tori” Nelson seems to have it all. Educated at Boston University and Harvard Medical School, Tori has a career that has boasted one achievement after another—she has now landed at a clinic in Houston where she sees patients and pursues her medical research, learning all she can about environmental factors causing an uptick of diseases in her area. Tori soon finds herself on the cusp of publishing groundbreaking findings that will scientifically prove that petrochemical giants have been polluting the air and causing unprecedented rates of cancer, along with a myriad of other serious (and often terminal) illnesses. Tori’s former college roommate, Jo, now an environmental attorney, is in on this too, as her firm is set to represent plaintiffs trying to hold the corporations to account. As Jo makes her way to Houston, Tori is confronted by her medical director—who is clearly beholden to the oil companies—and told to stop filing insurance claims on behalf of her patients. Back in her office, Tori is called down to the lobby to meet two FBI agents who’ve come to arrest her, informing Tori she’s a suspect in a bank robbery case. As she reels from this accusation and tries to remain steadfast in her work and research, readers learn that Tori’s harboring her own secrets about her crumbling marriage and a mysterious new friend named Jude. In some senses, Grayhall’s novel will feel familiar to readers as Tori takes on the Goliath of capitalism as it puts the squeeze on everyone and everything in her life. The calculus here is simple (“It’s not only me,” Jo says to Tori, “thinking that you might have been framed for the bank robbery. And that your cancer study and whatever information you’re getting that you can’t tell me about threatens Big Oil because they’re worried about being exposed as environmental criminals”), but Grayhall’s smooth, easy prose and the manner in which the two women navigate the shifting landscape of their friendship amid the accusations and secrets will keep readers rapt.
A taut rendering of one woman’s fight against Big Oil.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9798993701707
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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