A complex tale of cosmic evil featuring a glamorous, well-developed ensemble.
In Boisvert’s debut sci-fi novel, the first in a trilogy, three people with type-A personalities experience strange enlightenments.
Lanie Montrose is a pop-music superstar with a troubled personal life, known as much for her recreational drug use as for her talent. She’s trying to get clean, but when she overdoses at a party under suspicious circumstances, she’s taken to a clinic in Malibu, California. Soon afterward, Suki Carter, Lanie’s therapist, meets a woman named Becca on the street whom she met at the same party; Becca hands Suki a data stick before she’s killed in front of the therapist in a hit-and-run. Meanwhile, Suki’s childhood friend James Sinclair, a Scottish-born paranormalist and “conspiracy investigator” for the CIA, is tending to his dying mother; he’d long been skeptical of her lifelong ravings about aliens and Knights Templar, but then he sees a strange vision that changes his mind. It’s later revealed that the three main characters have mystical and genetic connections that go back millennia; they’re part of a mass “awakening” going on all over the world as praying mantis–like aliens start mobilizing operatives to prepare for the return of an ancient, evil space being. It turns out that James, Suki, and especially Lanie are key to Earth’s defense against the onslaught. Boisvert drops Danielle Steel–like characters into a New Age–y sci-fi/fantasy plot. Surprisingly, given the planetary stakes, she focuses tightly on her small cast, acutely analyzing the trio’s emotional states as they gradually acclimate to their amazing destinies. She does this so well, in fact, that readers likely won’t wonder too much about whether Lanie is supposed to be Madonna, Britney Spears, or Katy Perry. However, other subplots—about a 9/11–type attack, a pioneering Mars mission, and all the other humans “awakening” to their superpowers—end up being shunted to the margins. More of these details, though, may be forthcoming in future volumes, following this one’s cliffhanger finale.
A complex tale of cosmic evil featuring a glamorous, well-developed ensemble.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-71982-893-2
Page Count: 436
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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