by Sabine Durrant ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 26, 2015
Despite the book's shortcomings, the author redeems herself in the end, displaying undeniable growth and sharpened literary...
Durrant’s sophomore effort (Under Your Skin, 2014) tackles the complicated, dark, and disturbing mind of a manipulative and often abusive man who may—or may not—be dead.
Lizzie, a somewhat ordinary but sweet and unassuming British school librarian, has scraped up the courage to visit the lonely stretch of highway where her handsome husband, Zach, died in a horrific one-car accident. But on Valentine’s Day 2013—one year to the day since he died—when she makes that pilgrimage to leave flowers at the site, Lizzie finds someone’s beaten her there: a bouquet addressed "For Zach" and signed “Xenia” has already been left. Distraught, she decides to drive up to Zach's vacation cabin, where she expects to find a letter she had mailed there just before he died, telling him that she wanted a divorce. "Thank God he died before he read it," she thinks, planning to burn it. But when she gets to the cabin, she finds the letter scrunched up at the bottom of the garbage can. Convinced that Zach may still be alive and with a growing sense that someone is watching her, Lizzie starts digging into her controlling husband’s past and finds discrepancies that make her question everything she has ever known about the man she married, including his true identity. Meanwhile, intermittent chapters are narrated by Zach; they're dated over several years, leading up to the day of his accident. Durrant’s skill in creating a moody, menacing atmosphere shines in this tale, although likable, compliant Lizzie often comes across as both much too quick to trust people and way too slow to recognize when things are going sideways. Her low-key response in handling the very obviously disturbed teen who bullies her way into her life fits the character but also makes her seem like a bit of a dimwit rather than simply a milquetoast.
Despite the book's shortcomings, the author redeems herself in the end, displaying undeniable growth and sharpened literary skills since her first novel.Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1632-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
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by Caitlin Mullen ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2020
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.
In Atlantic City, the bodies of several women wait to be discovered and a young psychic begins having visions of terrible violence.
They are known only as Janes 1 through 6, the women who have been strangled and left in the marsh behind the seedy Sunset Motel. They wait for someone to miss them, to find them. That someone might be Clara, a teenage dropout who works the Atlantic City strip as a psychic and occasionally has visions. She can tell there's something dangerous at work, but she has other problems. To pay the rent, she begins selling her company, and then her body, to older men. One day she meets Lily, another young woman who'd escaped the depressing decay of Atlantic City for New York only to be betrayed by a man. She’s come back to AC because there’s nowhere else to go, and she spends her time working a dead-end job and drinking herself into oblivion. Together, Clara and Lily may be able to figure out the truth—but they will each lose something along the way. Mullen’s style is subtle, flowing; she switches the narrative voice with each chapter, giving us Clara and Lily but also each of the victims. At the heart of the novel lies the bitter observation that “Women get humiliated every day, in small stupid ways and in huge, disastrous ones.” Mullen writes about all the moments that women compromise themselves in the face of male desire and male power and how they learn to use sex as commerce because “men are always promised this, no matter who they are.” The other major character in the novel is Atlantic City itself: fading; falling to ruin; promising an old sort of glamour that no longer exists; swindling sad, lonely people out of their money. This backdrop is unexpected and well rendered.
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2748-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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