A fast-paced and fun fusion of supernatural romance and mainstream thriller.
This second installment of Merrill’s Gifted saga—which blends elements of contemporary fantasies, suspense novels, and paranormal romances—continues a story about the staff and students of a school for gifted kids whose lives have been impacted by tragedy.
Jackson Howe is a retired Army Ranger who is now working as an art teacher and head resident of the boys’ dormitory at Havenhart Academy, a boarding school in rural Arkansas founded to help heal and nurture students with supernatural abilities who have been traumatized in some way. An empath of sorts—Jackson can link telepathically to those he has a “Connection” with—he finds that he is deeply tied to Cassidy Mackenzie, the best friend of the academy’s counselor, Delaney Frost (the main character in the series opener). But Cassidy barely knows the 6-foot-4 hunk, and Jackson doesn’t know how to approach the woman whom he so desperately wants to start a relationship with. Yet when she is kidnapped by religious zealots associated with the head of a doomsday cult who calls himself His Right Hand—a man whose teenage daughter, Joanna, is now safe from her abusive father and attending Havenhart—Jackson uses his Connection with Cassidy to track her down to a location deep in the Florida Everglades. Rescuing her from the clutches of a cult leader with a cache of weapons and indoctrinated soldiers proves to be more dangerous than he expected. The deep focus on Jackson and Cassidy’s intimate bond is an obvious strength, powering the narrative with an I’ll-have-what-they’re-having kind of connection. At one point, Cassidy muses: “I’d barely known him then, I barely knew him now, but he was the embodiment of safety and warmth. I knew instinctively that I could trust him.” The romance element is complemented nicely by the relentless action and adventure throughout, creating an emotionally intense and page-turning narrative. Still, the extended fixation on both main characters’ self-doubts regarding the strength and validity of their relationship gets old quickly, and the author’s lack of overall descriptions (or worldbuilding) makes for a two-dimensional read in places.
A fast-paced and fun fusion of supernatural romance and mainstream thriller.Pub Date: April 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-953433-04-6
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Celie Bay Publications LLC
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.
A dark fantasy set on the Yale campus ends with a bang.
Galaxy “Alex” Stern of Lethe House, one of Yale’s storied secret societies, has been to hell and back. That was in Hell Bent (2023), the middle book in Bardugo’s Ninth House trilogy, where the secret societies wield not just temporal power but magic as well. Hell Bent ended with Alex and her friends rescuing her crush, mentor, and fellow Lethe officer, Daniel “Darlington” Arlington V, from eternal torment. One small wrinkle: The demon Golgarot used Alex’s blood to wedge a door open between Hell and New Haven, and his minions are slipping through. Also, one of the group has turned into a vampire, and Darlington is now half demon. “He’d given up some part of himself to preserve the rest of his human soul. He’d become both prisoner and warden.” As the final book opens, the exhausted crew are hunting yet another monster. They can’t keep this up forever; they will have to find a way to close the portal. Alex has the energetic, driven melancholy of the hard-boiled, dark fantasy heroine she is. She believes “magic is real, but safe is make-believe,” as her roommate puts it. An open hellmouth, a supportive scholar, a vampire whose story arcs precariously toward redemption, a gentleman fiend who gets literally horny when aroused, a California girl with rare supernatural powers who cracks wise as she fights fiends—the series has a lot in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spawn, but Bardugo’s way with words and her keen social observation keep the book from feeling derivative. A demon’s classic New England house is decorated with “ruthlessly inoffensive watercolor seascapes”; Lethe’s board president “wore the new uniform of Wall Street: a dress shirt, khakis, and a fleece with a Yale Y embroidered over the heart, as if he were on his way to a hostile takeover followed by some light rock climbing.” Will Alex and her friends get the door shut without losing Darlington? Bardugo injects her protagonist with such a convincing mix of cynicism and hope that failure seems like a distinct possibility.
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781250884312
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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