Wicked entertainment.
A less-than-grief-stricken widow follows in her novelist husband’s bestselling footsteps but finds that someone knows more about her than is safe—for either of them.
Anna Williams-Bonner has no burning literary vocation, and she certainly has no need to bury herself in work to recover from her spouse’s tragic supposed suicide. But an idle remark while she’s on the road promoting Jacob Finch Bonner’s posthumously published final work prompts her powerhouse agent—the one she inherited along with Jacob’s royalty checks—to get her into an artists’ colony; Anna, whose years working on a Seattle radio show prepping a lazy boss for author interviews have given her zero respect for the literary world, figures it can’t be all that hard to produce autobiographical fiction exploiting her alleged bereavement. Readers of The Plot (2021) already know that Anna is not at all what she seems, and this successor volume’s deliciously nasty narration (third-person, but from Anna’s point of view) creepily depicts the inner life of a perennially aggrieved, viciously vindictive, and alarming resourceful sociopath. At a signing for her novel, a Post-it note stuck inside one copy of the book warns Anna that someone knows about the past she has worked assiduously to bury. Tracking down this threat to her new prosperity and status requires Anna to revisit that past, and as she does readers learn in grim detail about the long trail of misdeeds she’s left behind her. One wonderfully ironic plot twist plays on the publishing world’s infamous slush piles, unsolicited manuscripts that molder unread for years in editorial offices; another reveals a rare misstep by Anna. A slew of barbed characterizations—there are no good guys here—add to the mean-spirited fun. The conclusion suggests that Korelitz may decide to emulate Patricia Highsmith and keep her antisocial protagonist around for more enjoyably amoral outings.
Wicked entertainment.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781250875471
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Red-hot storytelling.
Two master storytellers create one explosive thriller.
Mauna Loa is going to blow within days—“the biggest damn eruption in a century”—and John “Mac” MacGregor of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory leads a team trying to fend off catastrophe. Can they vent the volcano? Divert the flow of blistering hot lava? The city of Hilo is but a few miles down the hill from the world’s largest active volcano and will likely be in the path of a 15-foot-high wall of molten menace racing toward them at 50 miles an hour. “You live here, you always worry about the big one,” Mac says, and this could be it. There’s much more, though. The U.S. Army swoops in, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff personally “drafts” Mac into the Army. Then Mac learns the frightening secret of the Army’s special interest in Mauna Loa, and suddenly the stakes fly far, far beyond Hilo. Perhaps they can save the world, but the odds don’t look good. Readers will sympathize with Mac, who teaches surfing to troubled teens and for whom “taking chances is part of his damned genetic code.” But no one takes chances like the aerial cowboy Jake Rogers and the photographer who hires him to fly over the smoldering, burbling, rock-spitting hellhole. Some of the action scenes will make readers’ eyes pop as the tension continues to build. As with any good thriller, there’s a body count, but not all thrillers have blackened corpses surfing lava flows. The story is the brainchild of the late Crichton, who did a great deal of research but died in 2008 before he could finish the novel. His widow handed the project to James Patterson, who weaves Crichton’s work into a seamless summer read.
Red-hot storytelling.Pub Date: June 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780316565073
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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