This compelling book will keep you wondering what is real and what is madness.
A young woman questions her sanity after she's forced to cohabit with her estranged mother.
When Grace, a happily single 30-something who enjoys her job as a hairdresser and the independence she has gained from living alone in Pittsburgh, gets a call from her mother, Jackie, who wants to move in with her during the Covid pandemic, she is not thrilled. She and her mother have not been close since the death of her disabled twin sister, Hope, nearly 20 years earlier. But her mother needs her assistance, and with her income slashed because of the stay-at-home order, Grace needs help paying her mortgage, so she reluctantly agrees. The two coexist relatively peacefully for a while, the atmosphere sometimes pleasant but more often claustrophobic and oppressive. Just as it seems the two women might reconcile, Grace starts to have trouble sleeping, and soon, nightmares take over her entire unconscious life. When they begin to seep in during the day as well, she starts to question her own mental state as well as her mother's, and both she and the reader start to wonder if her sanity is connected to her mother's presence and what is really going on in that house. Amid her intense newfound insomnia, her mother makes a startling accusation, and things take a turn for the worse. The tense relationship between Grace and Jackie is well drawn and relatable. Though the nightmares sometimes get repetitive and take up too much space, the overarching plot and unreliable narrative voice—written in the third person but very close to Grace's perspective—make this a disturbing yet addictive read.
This compelling book will keep you wondering what is real and what is madness.Pub Date: March 1, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-6625-0624-6
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A smart, captivating novel about unraveling secrets.
Puzzle genius Mike Brink, invited to Tokyo to open a booby-trapped puzzle box containing imperial secrets, risks becoming its latest victim.
No run-of-the-mill puzzle expert, Brink can suss out seemingly impossible solutions with the savant syndrome and synesthesia he acquired as the result of a freakish head injury during high school. But his “nuclear brainpower” intensifies his need “to put [himself] in psychic danger to feel alive.” In Japan, he feels as alive as he ever will, knowing that all six puzzle masters who attempted to open the deviously designed Dragon Box died trying. Constructed in 1868, “a time of unimaginable upheaval in Japan,” it is equipped with such charming features as a guillotine to cut off a misplaced finger and a lethal aerosol spray containing arsenic. But Brink’s tense adventure, which culminates in a cave on the island of Kyushu, “where the sun disappeared,” only begins with his efforts to open the box. He is pursued by dark forces who are so desperate to keep him from its secrets—which are said to hold a key to the future of humanity—that they had his doctor-mentor in America murdered. At the center of the drama are two estranged sisters, one Brink’s ally and the other part of the opposing faction. In different ways, both women, descendants of a samurai family, are beholden to Jameson Sedge, a tech billionaire who set up Brink’s ex-girlfriend for murder in Trussoni’s previous novel, The Puzzle Master (2023). Though he died by suicide, his downloaded consciousness is “digitally alive.” The sequel takes a while to get going, but once its hero starts applying his special gifts, learning things he has kept secret from himself, the pages turn and the suspense kicks in.
A smart, captivating novel about unraveling secrets.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9780593595329
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
A Gone Girl–esque confection with villainy and melodrama galore.
A wealthy woman with a handsome husband is preyed on by a ruthless con artist.
One day at the gym, Amber Patterson drops the magazine she’s reading between her exercise bike and that of the woman who happens to be beside her, Daphne Parrish. As she bends to pick it up, Daphne notices that it’s the publication of a cystic fibrosis foundation. What a coincidence—Daphne’s sister died of cystic fibrosis, and, why, so did Amber’s! “Slowing her pace, Amber wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. It took a lot of acting skills to cry about a sister who never existed.” Step one complete. “All she needed from Daphne was everything.” Everything, in this case, consists of Daphne’s outlandishly wealthy and blisteringly hot husband, Jackson, and all the real estate that comes with him; Daphne can definitely keep her two whiny brats. Amber hates children. But once she finds out that Daphne’s failure to give Jackson a male heir is the main source of tension in the marriage, she sees exactly how to make this work. Amber’s constant, spiteful inner monologue as she plays up to Daphne is the best thing about this book. For example, as Daphne talks about the many miseries her sister Julie went through before her death, Amber is thinking, “At least Julie had grown up in a nice house with money and parents who cared about her. Okay, she was sick and then she died. So what? A lot of people were sick. A lot of people died.…How about Amber and what she’d gone through?” Meanwhile, poor, stupid Daphne is so caught up in the joy of finally having a friend, she seems to be handing Jackson to her on a platter. Constantine’s debut novel is the work of two sisters in collaboration, and these ladies definitely know the formula.
A Gone Girl–esque confection with villainy and melodrama galore.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-266757-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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