Sharp characters and a striking depiction of friendship within a story that never quite coheres.
An often funny debut novel about three friends searching for love and themselves in a rapidly gentrifying Detroit.
Dominick, Troy, and Remy, three Black gay men in Detroit, are at a key turning point in their lives. After having caught his boyfriend in bed with another man and gotten fired from his job on the same day, Dominick Gibson packed up his car, left Manhattan, and, as the book opens, is driving back to his mom’s house in Detroit. Dominick is unsure what’s next for him, but he feels the clock ticking: “Here he was now, thirty-three years old and with eight years with his ex, Justin, having led absolutely nowhere. Time was running out. Though when you’re Black, gay, and thirtysomething, time always feels like it’s running out.” Dominick reconnects with Troy Clements, his best friend, who's a socially minded teacher at The Mahaffey School in a neighborhood primed for “redevelopment”—or, in other words, bulldozers. Like so many Detroit residents, Troy is unsure about his city’s future. As he tells Dominick, “My worry is that it won’t be a Black city anymore. That it’s not going to belong to us like it used to. White people have started moving here in droves. Every time you look up—Dan Gilbert! New restaurant! New this, new that! And my thing is, I’m looking at my kids at Mahaffey and their families, and I know they won’t be able to keep up when it hits.” The final member of the trio is Troy's friend Remy Patton, a real estate agent who goes by “Mr. Detroit.” When Remy takes on a project that threatens Troy’s school, all three men have to decide where their loyalties lies. Foley’s novel paints a vivid picture of Detroit gentrification pushing African American residents out in favor of high-priced condos, bougie restaurants, and new, White residents. The novel also excels at showing the ups and downs of the dating scene in Detroit. Dominick, Troy, and Remy experience steamy hookups, genuine connections, awkward encounters with closeted White men from the suburbs, and even an attempted rape. Foley has created original, striking characters; unfortunately, alternating among all three points of view sacrifices some of the plot’s momentum. Each man goes through dramatic ups and downs, but the larger story gets lost along the way.
Sharp characters and a striking depiction of friendship within a story that never quite coheres.Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-953368-25-6
Page Count: 386
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
© 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.
