A sexy suspense novel despite some loose plot threads.
A traumatized Toronto heiress experiences new dangers and first love with a mysterious, covert operative in this debut romantic thriller.
In a prologue, Maddison Brooks muses upon being held captive seven years ago, after she startled a burglar who was likely after her green diamond Fabergé egg. After a shadowy figure freed her, she was put under psychiatric care by her rich Toronto businessman father and has since been plagued by visions that cause bleeding wounds on her body. In the present day, 22-year-old Maddison is on her way to meet her visiting older sister at a Toronto restaurant. Matthew Stoke, who’s getting ready for a covert assignment, spots Maddison, is struck by her beauty, and is shocked to learn her identity as the woman he once rescued. The couple has a brief yet powerful encounter, and Maddison is dazzled by his “money green” eyes. That night, she awakens to find Matthew in her house, and he saves her from arriving murderous thugs. He brings her to his home, where he witnesses one of her bleeding episodes. She loses her virginity to him, and the couple enjoys multiple bouts of mind-blowing sex. They also investigate the thugs, although Maddison chafes under Matthew’s protection, which includes security teams and surveillance. A blowout birthday party for Maddison’s father at the Metropolitan Museum of Art becomes the setting for a final, violent showdown. Author Brade turns up the heat in this first installment of a planned series, which includes many racy descriptions of the leading couple’s sexual fireworks, such as spanking and other love play (“He spanked me again, softer than before, but this time hungrier, his intensity stronger”). However, the book doesn’t fully explain the mystery of the missing egg, which takes a back seat to the romantic interludes, although the author may intend to connect the dots further in a follow-up. Overall, though, this is a rollicking, intriguing start.
A sexy suspense novel despite some loose plot threads.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9934306-0-2
Page Count: 446
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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