A propulsive thriller with heart that will keep readers guessing.
A husband learns his wife is hiding a secret life.
Emma and Leo have been happily married for seven years, although they’ve weathered their share of struggles (such as infertility and Emma’s cancer diagnosis). Emma’s a marine ecologist and erstwhile TV presenter whose bubbly personality is loved by all, while Leo is an obituary writer and his wife’s No. 1 fan. Both are head over heels for their young daughter, Ruby. Although Emma’s currently doing well, Leo is given the job of prewriting her obituary, a common strategy with people who are in the public eye. In his quest to write the perfect tribute to his wife, he starts looking into her past and discovers a few inconsistencies he can’t explain. Why did Emma lie about her university degree? Why is she so cagey about her life before Leo? How is she connected to a famous actress who just went missing? And, most importantly, is her name even Emma? As Emma attempts to cover up her secrets, Leo digs through their house for clues and tracks down people from her past in an attempt to figure out why she’s lying and what she’s hiding from him. The old life Emma tried so carefully to hide threatens to destroy the new life she’s built with Leo. Walsh masterfully shows both Emma’s and Leo’s points of view while maintaining an intoxicating air of mystery. As readers get to know them both, it seems unbelievable that lovable Emma could be deceiving Leo…but how else to explain the secrets he’s uncovering? The big reveal about Emma’s life manages to be both surprising and heartbreaking, with many twists and turns along the way.
A propulsive thriller with heart that will keep readers guessing.Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-59-329699-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
This fresh reworking of a Greek myth will resonate.
An otherworldly Latinx retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth set in the South Bronx.
Pheus visits his father in the Bronx every summer. The Afro-Dominican teen is known for his mesmerizing bachata music, love of history, and smooth way with the ladies. Eury, a young Puerto Rican woman and Hurricane Maria survivor, is staying with her cousin for the summer because of a recent, unspecified traumatic event. Her family doesn’t know that she’s been plagued since childhood by the demonlike Ato. Pheus and Eury bond over music and quickly fall in love. Attacked at a dance club by Sileno, its salacious and satyrlike owner, Eury falls into a coma and is taken to el Inframundo by Ato. Pheus, despite his atheism, follows the advice of his father and a local bruja to journey to find his love in the Underworld. Rivera skillfully captures the sounds and feels of the Bronx—its unique, diverse culture and the creeping gentrification of its neighborhoods. Through an amalgamation of Greek, Roman, and Taíno mythology and religious beliefs, gaslighting, the colonization of Puerto Rico, Afro-Latinidad identity, and female empowerment are woven into the narrative. While the pacing lags in the middle, secondary characters aren’t fully developed, and the couple’s relationship borders on instalove, the rush of a summertime romance feels realistic. Rivera’s complex world is well realized, and the dialogue rings true. All protagonists are Latinx.
This fresh reworking of a Greek myth will resonate. (Fabulism. 14-adult)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0373-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
A hyperviolent family saga with surprising amounts of humor and empathy.
A matriarch struggles to keep her family alive and well in a drug-sick patch of Maine.
Babs Dionne, the hero of Currie’s bracing fourth novel, has a chip on her shoulder, and who can blame her? In 1968, when she was 14, she was raped by a policeman in her hometown; after she killed him, she was sent to a convent that helped her evade punishment, but that also separated her from her Francophone upbringing. (Her town, Waterville, has a neighborhood named Little Canada in tribute to its Quebecois roots.) Fast-forward to 2016, and Babs’ role as the town’s doyenne—achieved by running the community’s opioid trade, passively supported by police and religious leaders looking the other way—is starting to collapse. One of her daughters, Sis, is a meth addict who’s gone missing; her grandson needs rescuing from an abusive father; another daughter, Lori, is an Afghan war vet who’s shuffling between heroin and oxy. (We first meet her overdosing in a bar bathroom before a dose of Narcan saves her.) Meanwhile, a hitman for a rival dealer has arrived in town, ready to kill anybody standing in his way. The setting is almost relentlessly tragic and violent—oh, and there’s a meth-dealing serial killer on the loose—but Currie’s focus on Babs’ intense care for her family gives the novel an almost cozy temperament. "If you loved like Babs does, it would break you," a friend says, and Babs exemplifies a family that loves deeply if not always wisely. The plot turns on Babs’ efforts during a summer week to resolve a death in the family, protect who’s left, and start a school that’ll support the community’s dying Francophone culture. Nobody will confuse this for an Anne Tyler novel, but Currie has created a charming community to root for, even if, as the title suggests, all victories here are pyrrhic.
A hyperviolent family saga with surprising amounts of humor and empathy.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593851661
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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