Hawkins manages to achieve the seemingly impossible: A Frankenstein-inspired novel that feels both fresh and unique.
Past and present collide when two old friends spend a summer writing at an infamous villa in Italy.
After a tough year, Emily Sheridan needs a change. Enter Chess Chandler, her best friend since childhood, the golden girl who has become effortlessly famous for her self-help books and her glamorous Instagram posts and who has rented an Italian villa for the summer—a villa famous not only as a luxury retreat, but as the scene of a 1970s murder. Hawkins then turns the narrative over to the people who inhabited the villa that tragic summer—particularly a young woman writer who finds the inspiration to write a seminal work of horror; her hapless, brilliant husband; and the cruel, famous young aristocrat who drew them all there. It takes barely a page for the allusions to become apparent: This is a reimagining of the famous summer of 1814, when Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron held a ghost story contest from which Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was born. The novel continues to cut from the summer of 1974 to the present, as Emily begins to recapture her own power and imagination as a writer—even as she discovers that Chess may not be the friend she appears to be. Though the introduction of the major players of 1974 (Mari Godwick, Pierce Sheldon, Noel Gordon, etc.) feels rather heavy-handed, the characters quickly take on a fascinating life and energy that elevates them from being mere copies of the historic Romantics. And while the operatically tragic characters of the 1970s are ultimately more intriguing than Chess and Emily and their (mostly) petty dramas, Hawkins casts a sharp eye throughout to the way we construct stories about female artists—and the moral ambiguity inherent in creation and fame. The effect lingers like a shadow, or a creature, that endures past the final words.
Hawkins manages to achieve the seemingly impossible: A Frankenstein-inspired novel that feels both fresh and unique.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-2502-8001-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
A rather flat entry in a generally excellent series.
The 25th novel featuring Silva’s legendary protagonist.
During his intersecting careers as art restorer and Israeli spy, Gabriel Allon has tangled with Russian gangsters and al-Qaida terrorists. He has become well-acquainted with operatives in multiple security agencies and befriended a paid assassin. He has busted art thieves and created passable forgeries by Renaissance masters and abstract Modernists. This latest installment centers around his relationship with the pope and a newly discovered painting by Leonardo da Vinci that has gone missing from the Vatican. Silva’s novels tend to fall into two categories: books that reflect the politics of the day and books that don’t. His latest is one of the latter, which could be a treat for readers looking for escape, but it falls flat for a variety of reasons. Luxury has always been part of Gabriel Allon’s universe. It used to be an aspect of tradecraft, though. Allon would be wearing a very expensive suit and driving a very expensive car because he was posing as a client at a Swiss bank. Here, his wife is hosting a catered lunch for 150 of their daughter’s classmates in their apartment overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice. What once felt like a scintillating peek into the world of the obscenely wealthy now just feels…kind of obscene. Similarly, Allon goes chasing after a missing painting as a civilian—he retired from Mossad in Portrait of an Unknown Woman (2022)—the same way another man his age might buy a speedboat or get hair plugs. As the story progresses, the stakes are raised, but it’s hard to forget that Allon is now a middle-aged man pursuing a dangerous hobby, rather than a spymaster leading his intrepid team to prevent a disaster that will disrupt the global order.
A rather flat entry in a generally excellent series.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780063384217
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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