An entertaining occult thriller that mixes captivating magic with bracing psychological realism.
An American kid travels back in time to an ancient society while his family fruitlessly searches for him in Halbert’s historical fantasy adventure.
It’s 2010, and the Keane family—mom Lyana, historian dad Ian, snarky teen daughter Ariel, and son Zach, a neurodivergent boy who obsessively counts things—are ensconced in a spooky old Tudor house in Littleton, Massachusetts. One night, Zach starts climbing the staircase and somehow ends up in an ancient society, where he befriends Akolo, a young boy brought to the city by the king after his village was raided. The king also brought back a chest. The two boys have ouroboros-shaped amulets that glow prettily near the chest, and the voice of God duly pronounces them “servants.” (Zach also miraculously gains the ability to speak the native language.) The king wants Zach and Akolo to harness the chest’s power for him, and is delighted when Zach figures out that objects placed beside the chest during a lunar eclipse—a blood moon—become imbued with divine mojo. Meanwhile, as months go by, the distraught Keanes refuse to entertain the likelihood that Zach is dead. Ian pursues seemingly unhinged theories regarding his disappearance while Lyana perceives whispering voices and unsettling visions of a blood-drenched girl. Their suspicions fall upon Marshall, the house’s informal caretaker, who lives in a cabin filled with rare ancient books and has an ouroboros tattoo; their misgivings heighten when Ariel discovers a photograph of him from the 1800s. Zach is working from his end to find a way back to the 21st century before the king takes him and Akolo back to Akolo’s village to help rebuild the temple, which will sever Zach’s access to the time-travel portal.
In this second installment of their Goodpasture Chronicles series, husband-and-wife authors Jason and Rhonda Halbert (writing under the pen name R.J. Halbert) create a richly textured portrait of an ancient society. Zach adroitly navigates palace intrigues, the king’s despotic whims, and the potentially fatal chest, portrayed by the Halberts in punchy, mordant prose. (“The sound was a muffled scream, as if the man was being strangled,” they write of a soldier forced to approach the chest as an experiment. “Akolo leaned forward to get a better look, then wished he hadn’t when he saw the man’s face—it was white as a tunic and frozen in fear. This man was dead.”) The contemporary branch of the narrative is a tense study of a family disintegrating under pressure, then struggling to regroup, written in evocative prose that strips bare the characters’ weaknesses and comforting delusions. (“Some of his best academic insights had come with a glass in his hand, the whiskey warming his thoughts until patterns emerged from chaos,” Ian tells himself as he hits the bottle. “Just one, he rationalized, already rising from his chair. Just enough to think clearly. For Zach.”) The result is a page turner with real literary depth.
An entertaining occult thriller that mixes captivating magic with bracing psychological realism.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781963366099
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Eald Talu House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
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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