A bleak and haunting multigenre tale.
In this paranormal novel, a woman discovers she has mysterious ties to a handsome but bewildering stranger.
It was Elisabeth’s idea to backpack in Ireland with her fiance, Josh. But the trip and her engagement end prematurely when she finds definitive proof that Josh has been unfaithful. She goes off on her own and takes a tumble in the woods only to have an apparent dream of a dragon abducting her. This is especially troubling, as she’s had a lifelong recurring dream of a dragon proclaiming she is his and the two living together in immortality. Elisabeth awakens in the village of Oakshire, where a “healer,” Constantine, is tending to her injury from the fall. He’s certainly attractive, but Elisabeth keeps her distance, as she’s fresh out of the turbulent relationship with Josh. But Constantine seduces her: He may have genuine feelings for her, having lost the woman he loved to murder. Elisabeth, meanwhile, just wants to get home to Philadelphia, but with a flooded road and no cell service, it doesn’t appear she’s going anywhere soon. Although fate may have connected her dreams with Constantine’s past, he has a shocking plan for Elisabeth. While surprises await Elisabeth, Drighton provides enough clues that readers will predict most of them. But this is the striking story’s essence: a relentless dread, with unpleasantness seeming inevitable. As in her preceding novel, The Ghosts of Winworth Manor (2019), the author writes erotic scenes tinged with a sense of uneasiness. Although her straightforward prose gives explicit erotica a romantic overtone, readers will be aware of something dark in certain characters’ motivations. Even dubious individuals get the spotlight (and perhaps sympathy) in the ominous narrative’s episodes, from the backstory of Constantine’s lost love to Josh’s post-breakup encounter that ultimately links to the main plot. Despite the memorable ending implying a possible sequel, this engrossing novel works as a stand-alone.
A bleak and haunting multigenre tale.Pub Date: May 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68470-207-7
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.
The master of supernatural disaster returns with four horror-laced novellas.
The protagonist of the title story, Holly Gibney, is by King’s own admission one of his most beloved characters, a “quirky walk-on” who quickly found herself at the center of some very unpleasant goings-on in End of Watch, Mr. Mercedes, and The Outsider. The insect-licious proceedings of the last are revisited, most yuckily, while some of King’s favorite conceits turn up: What happens if the dead are never really dead but instead show up generation after generation, occupying different bodies but most certainly exercising their same old mean-spirited voodoo? It won’t please TV journalists to know that the shape-shifting bad guys in that title story just happen to be on-the-ground reporters who turn up at very ugly disasters—and even cause them, albeit many decades apart. Think Jack Torrance in that photo at the end of The Shining, and you’ve got the general idea. “Only a coincidence, Holly thinks, but a chill shivers through her just the same,” King writes, “and once again she thinks of how there may be forces in this world moving people as they will, like men (and women) on a chessboard.” In the careful-what-you-wish-for department, Rat is one of those meta-referential things King enjoys: There are the usual hallucinatory doings, a destiny-altering rodent, and of course a writer protagonist who makes a deal with the devil for success that he thinks will outsmart the fates. No such luck, of course. Perhaps the most troubling story is the first, which may cause iPhone owners to rethink their purchases. King has gone a far piece from the killer clowns and vampires of old, with his monsters and monstrosities taking on far more quotidian forms—which makes them all the scarier.
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.Pub Date: April 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3797-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
It's almost enough to make a person believe in ghosts.
A disturbing household secret has far-reaching consequences in this dark, unusual ghost story.
Mallory Quinn, fresh out of rehab and recovering from a recent tragedy, has taken a job as a nanny for an affluent couple living in the upscale suburb of Spring Brook, New Jersey, when a series of strange events start to make her (and her employers) question her own sanity. Teddy, the precocious and shy 5-year-old boy she's charged with watching, seems to be haunted by a ghost who channels his body to draw pictures that are far too complex and well formed for such a young child. At first, these drawings are rather typical: rabbits, hot air balloons, trees. But then the illustrations take a dark turn, showcasing the details of a gruesome murder; the inclusion of the drawings, which start out as stick figures and grow increasingly more disturbing and sophisticated, brings the reader right into the story. With the help of an attractive young gardener and a psychic neighbor and using only the drawings as clues, Mallory must solve the mystery of the house's grizzly past before it's too late. Rekulak does a great job with character development: Mallory, who narrates in the first person, has an engaging voice; the Maxwells' slightly overbearing parenting style and passive-aggressive quips feel very familiar; and Teddy is so three-dimensional that he sometimes feels like a real child.
It's almost enough to make a person believe in ghosts.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-81934-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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