An entertaining and emotional novel in which blood is thicker than salt water.
Zmak sets a vampire romance in the California beach community in this offbeat debut new-adult thriller.
When surfer Cody Hansen is killed in an apparent shark attack, it sends his best friend, Jake Ryder, spiraling. How could this have happened? Shark attacks are very uncommon, particularly on the California coast. As Jake seeks out another surfer—the last person to see Cody alive—to learn the truth about what happened, his quest leads him into dangerous waters. But it turns out that he’s not alone in his investigation. The story gives the reader a variety of perspectives on that tragic night in short, sharp, and occasionally brutal chapters. What’s more, the prose, while pithy, manages to give unique voices to characters with vastly different life experiences, providing the novel with a sense of depth. Among these characters is Lani Marley, a vacationing FBI agent looking into a rise in lethal, unpredictable shark attacks, which coincides with the movements of a surfer group called the Nomads. Both Jake and Lani find themselves drawn into the Nomads’ web; Jake, by the jealous, beautiful Skylar and Lani, by the Nomads’ darkly charismatic leader, Tristan. It turns out that the carefree night surfers are actually a cabal of shape-shifting vampires. As the romances between the Nomads and the outsiders intensify, all of their lives are threatened by the Nomads’ enemies and the cabal’s own bloody sense of justice. For the most part, the story flows quickly and smoothly. It sometimes takes abrupt turns, though, as in flashbacks to Tristan’s vampiric origins, his and Skylar’s first transformations, and the beginnings of the Nomads. At the same time, the story provides genuine depictions of the joy the characters take in surfing and the sea and the tribulations of love, guilt, and loyalty. It’s all passionate, fun, and delightfully new.
An entertaining and emotional novel in which blood is thicker than salt water.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-692-25817-0
Page Count: 422
Publisher: Zmak Creative
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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