An engaging mystery that needs a more compelling protagonist.
Murder and corruption add up for an investment whiz who is drawn into his hometown’s dark doings in this debut novel.
High schoolers Sam and Jake are childhood friends bound for different paths. All Sam wants to do is “go to a good college and get out of here”—here being the Berkshires in Massachusetts. The place has turned into a sin city à la Pottersville from It’s a Wonderful Life, rife with “greed, drug abuse, lack of leadership, and laziness.” Sam’s math acumen is his ticket out, and he gets a financial stake from venerable local Old Man Wesson that helps him to attend MIT on a full scholarship. Upon graduation, Wesson bankrolls an investment firm to be run by Sam and Bitchin’ Ralph, his best friend from MIT. Jake, meanwhile, is set up in the family business, which is running marijuana. He fled town following the death-by-nail-in-the-head of his Uncle Marvin. The two old friends are reunited when, after opening his firm, Sam receives a cashier’s check for $2 million with a note, “Make me some money.” Another check for $13 million follows. Soon after comes word that Jake has died. All roads lead back home, where a police officer leans a little too heavily on Sam, who begins to suspect something is rotten in the Berkshires as, when he is knocked unconscious, he hears a familiar voice say, “Sorry, buddy.” Lytes’ first installment of a series has fine writing, such as this gripping opening line: “When I saw Jake’s Uncle Marvin, who had a tenpenny nail in his forehead, chasing Jake, I knew what was happening.” The author also writes with a strong sense of place. The Berkshires region, with its wide-open fields, is an ideal location for burying things someone doesn’t want found. Characterizations and plotting could use sharpening, though (and the author spells Willie Nelson’s iconic name “Willy Nelson”). Sam retains his naïveté throughout, which strains credulity, especially in the case of Belinda, Jake’s beautiful older sister, who plays—a bit obviously to readers—the role of femme fatale. Sam never appears to really wise up, even in a climactic moment when Belinda has a gun pointed at his side.
An engaging mystery that needs a more compelling protagonist.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 404
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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