Far too self-consciously clever to be truly emotionally absorbing, this is nonetheless an enjoyable tribute for established...
Sassy girl detective meets overwrought gothic romance, and it goes about as well as you'd expect.
Kami Glass knows that she could be a great reporter, if there were only something worth investigating in her sleepy Cotswolds village. But now the aristocratic, secretive Lynburns are coming home to their sinister ancestral mansion, and Kami is determined that her high school newspaper will get the scoop. Soon, two gorgeous, near-identical Lynburn cousins, princely Ash and bad-boy Jared, join her journalistic team—not to mention Kami's imaginary best friend since babyhood, who turns out to be not quite so imaginary after all. And that's when the grisly murders start….From the abandoned abbey to the veiled villain, no gothic trope is forgotten while creating the doom-drenched atmosphere. Unfortunately, when an admirably intrepid 21st-century heroine with supportive family and friends replaces the traditional isolated innocent, and when every character banters with the same witty genre-savvy repartee even under the direst of circumstances, any suspension of disbelief is stretched to the snapping point. The abrupt tonal shift at the climax, when the magic previously hinted at is revealed as both deadly and heartbreaking, makes the final cliffhanger even more devastating.
Far too self-consciously clever to be truly emotionally absorbing, this is nonetheless an enjoyable tribute for established fans of the gothic, as well as an enticing introduction for new ones. (Fantasy. 11-17)Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-375-87041-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Hooked readers will be tapping their fingers waiting for the sequel.
Reichs follows up his Virals series (co-written with his mother, Kathy Reichs) with a new series about imminent human extinction.
Min is not your average 16-year-old. Living in a trailer park in an isolated town high in the mountains of Idaho, she’s learned to keep pretty much to herself. She has a mother who loves her and a best friend, Tack, who’d like to be more, but she knows they can’t understand what she’s going through. Every two years on her birthday, she’s murdered. And every two years she comes back, completely unharmed. She’s tried to escape the inevitable but knows it’s only a matter of time before the man in black returns for her. Now things are getting worse, with an asteroid headed toward Earth. Will this be it, the real end of her life? Just when she’s found that classmate Noah is having the same strange experiences she’s tried to keep hidden? Reichs varies his narrative structure, opening with Min’s present-day account, interspersed with italicized flashbacks, and then switching to Noah, whose account is punctuated by transcripts with the doctor he shares with Min, before their stories converge in alternating chapters. It’s a pacing strategy that keeps the pages flipping madly. Min, Tack, and Noah are all evidently white.
Hooked readers will be tapping their fingers waiting for the sequel. (Thriller. 12-16)Pub Date: March 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-54493-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
For fans of all things Disney.
“Sleeping Beauty” is the source for this second prince-focused novel based on Disney’s animated classics.
Betrothed to Princess Aurora since her birth, young Prince Phillip witnessed her being gifted by good fairies and doomed to death by the evil fairy Maleficent, although intervention by a good fairy weakened the curse to a long sleep until true love should awaken her. Assigned the task of defeating Maleficent before the curse takes hold on Aurora’s 16th birthday, and with no say in the matter, Phillip’s spent his childhood preparing for a battle he expects to lose—acquiring knightly skills, jousting in tournaments—all to facilitate his marriage to a girl he hasn’t seen since her infancy. Resentful but struggling to accept his fate, Phillip and his squire, Johanna, foil a robbery, helped by magical vines. Soon three fairies arrive to tell a skeptical Phillip he possesses magic. By day, they train him to develop powers he’ll need to defeat Maleficent; at night, he dreams of a girl, Briar Rose. They’re separated by an impenetrable, thorny maze, so he never sees her face, but over time they get to know each other through their nocturnal conversations. As Phillip’s showdown with Maleficent approaches, a devastating discovery undermines his confidence. The sympathetic characters, who largely read white, are well drawn. While their interactions often resemble repetitive, extended talk-therapy sessions, and readers will quickly grasp where the plot is headed, some action scenes pick up the pace.
For fans of all things Disney. (Fantasy. 12-16)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781368069120
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Disney Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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