A fascinating plot involving past and present bogged down by first draft–esque prose.
A new resident of a small Southern town finds herself pursued by ghostly guardians and real-life villains.
Beth Pearse has moved to Washington, North Carolina (the author’s real-life hometown), to make a fresh start. Five years after her husband, Brad, drowned due to an unexpected muscle cramp, Beth sets her sights on renovating an old building in close-knit historical Washington as a combination art gallery and home. Beth quickly falls for Sam Howard, a born-and-raised Washingtonian and historical preservationist who is involved in Beth’s renovation project. The relationship soon becomes romantic, but Beth continues to experience ghostly visions of a black woman warning Beth to watch her back. After Beth learns her new home was once a stop on the Underground Railroad, she and Sam discover the ghost’s identity: Selah Brown, a young woman who bought her freedom through sewing but met an untimely fate on her way to a new life. Beth settles into Washington life, making friends with construction worker Jose and his wife, Hellen, while keeping in contact with her business partner, Parisian art dealer Martin, and his family. In the meantime, Beth learns more of Selah’s story through the woman’s diary as Selah’s ghost continues to appear, guarding Beth from a person Selah can’t yet name. But when Beth is kidnapped by an unknown assailant and Martin receives ransom demands, he and Sam must team up to find out who’s keeping the woman against her will—and take a hard look at Washington’s own townspeople. Cooper’s (Sleeping Mallows, 2019) passions for local history and Southern charm are evident throughout the book, woven into an exciting story full of twists and turns as well as plenty of romance between Beth and Sam, two intelligent equals who respect each other’s work. Unfortunately, the writing style is overly formal and clumsy. Every character sounds the same—only Selah’s voice differs slightly from that of her modern-day counterparts—and flashbacks to Selah’s past, a recurring theme at first, cease halfway through.
A fascinating plot involving past and present bogged down by first draft–esque prose.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Out Reach Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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