In her sympathetic if somewhat uneven debut, La Seur entices readers with impeccable prose imbued with a blend of romance,...
A busy Washington lawyer returns home to sort out the details of her sister’s shadowy life and suspicious death.
When Alma Terrebonne receives word that her younger sister has died, she flies back to her hometown of Billings, Montana, and ends up shouldering more responsibility than she anticipated. There are no easy explanations for what happened. Vicky left her 11-year-old daughter, Brittany, in the early hours of the morning, and her frozen body was found hours later. The police find some physical evidence suggesting it may have been murder. Alma’s investigation reaffirms what's known around town: Vicky was a drug user who hung out with lowlifes and owed money to everyone; her own dysfunctional family, from her older brother to the aunt and uncle who raised her following the deaths of her parents, wasn’t immune. She even approached her grandmother about signing over mining rights to the family’s homestead to a seedy land agent, a man who threatens Alma when confronted. A part of the family for generations, the home place was built by her great-grandfather and represents to Alma comfort and memories of simpler and happier times. After law enforcement officers remove a drug dealer and remnants of a meth lab from the premises without taking standard safety precautions, Alma—apparently unconcerned about possible toxic contaminants—moves in with her traumatized niece. She plans to stay only a few days before turning Brittany over to her aunt and uncle’s care and returning to her job in Washington, but she becomes increasingly aware that her niece’s well-being is in her hands. During the course of their stay, she reignites a friendship with her high school sweetheart, Chance, and rediscovers long-dormant emotions. She also learns the lengths people will go to safeguard themselves and others.
In her sympathetic if somewhat uneven debut, La Seur entices readers with impeccable prose imbued with a blend of romance, nostalgia and suspense. There are plenty of enjoyable red herrings and tarnished characters, but some of the details lack credibility.Pub Date: July 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-232344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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