An incandescent tale of the French Revolution from the perspective of those history often renders invisible.
A mixed-race young woman attempts to find love, freedom, and her cultural identity amid the revolutionary throes of 18th-century Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) and Paris.
Eighteen-year-old Sylvie de Rosiers was born free, though the shadow of her mother’s enslavement remains an unshakeable part of her life. Her race bars her from entering certain echelons of aristocratic society, but as the daughter of a White coffee plantation owner, she also enjoys certain luxuries—a life of leisure on her family’s large estate and the hope of one day marrying a powerful man who belongs to the mixed-race affranchi class. After the public execution of the rebel Vincent Ogé, however, a slave uprising forces her to question the privileges her upbringing has afforded her. She and her brother, Gaspard, flee to Paris to seek refuge with an aunt, and Sylvie soon befriends Cornélie Duplay, a painter and the mistress of the famous revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre. Although Sylvie appreciates new freedoms in France, she still finds herself on the margins of society. The royalists disdain her because of her mixed-race heritage, and the lower-class republicans, the sans-culottes, revile her bourgeois status. Amid Sivak’s vividly drawn portrait of the bloody political and civil unrest in Paris during the last years of the Revolution, Sylvie finds her romantic passions in turmoil as well. While her admiration for Robespierre grows, she also finds herself increasingly attracted to Cornélie. As an ascending faction within the National Convention intensifies the call to purge anyone deemed a traitor to the Republic, Sylvie finds her heart increasingly torn between love and duty as she painstakingly comes to terms with the steep costs of both.
An incandescent tale of the French Revolution from the perspective of those history often renders invisible.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-33603-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
