A brisk, delightful tale of family, courage, and a chilly monster.
In this debut novel, two teenagers join an ice fishing community in battling a mythological creature across parallel dimensions.
Falc was lucky to survive an outdoor mishap during a blistering winter in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. A neighbor found the hypothermic and frostbitten 14-year-old atop a frozen lake, his shortcut home from school. But no one can explain why the boy was soaking wet when there were no holes or even cracks in the ice. Now, Falc prefers avoiding frozen lakes but willingly braves one for an overnight stay with Grandpa Rikkar, who lives nearby and has recently shown signs of Alzheimer’s disease. It turns out Rikkar and his friends’ ice shantytown isn’t so bad, especially with green-eyed fellow ninth grader Aiyanna there as well. But the teens panic when all the adults, including Aiyanna’s dad, suddenly vanish during the night. The youngsters eventually find them only to discover they’ve stumbled on a way of traveling to alternate realities. Different versions of the fishing community relentlessly fight the Jiekna, an ice creature sporting a perpetually morphing face and tentacled claws. Falc and Aiyanna lend their assistance, as killing the vicious beast may help them get home. Raymond’s speedy tale brims with suspense; the community faces multiple threats, such as “ice-phants” (ice phantoms) and the alarming possibility that the shantytown in all the dimensions is sinking. The author likewise depicts an unforgettable setting of merciless ice and subzero temperatures. His prose is sure to make readers bundle up: “A blast of wind hurled snow flurries across the arctic tundra, causing the party to lean in to protect the flames.” The cast, in contrast, is warm, from capable Aiyanna to a character named Slash, who ice-sculpts—and more—with her handy chainsaw. Nevertheless, Falc’s sad but heartfelt relationship with his grandpa is the highlight. His affection for Rikkar’s alternate versions never wavers, as the boy was already prepared to love a grandfather who no longer recognized him.
A brisk, delightful tale of family, courage, and a chilly monster.Pub Date: March 10, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-7970-9185-1
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.
The World Trade Center attacks are at the center of an intricate, twisty family drama spanning decades in both directions.
“You could brace for your sister to die of a terminal illness, only to have your healthy sibling killed in a random car wreck. You could carry a baby safely to term and then, on a bright blue day in September, walk into a building that collapsed beneath your feet.” Or you could be a character in a Jodi Picoult novel and face all of the above and much, much more. Fans of My Sister’s Keeper (2004) will notice a reference to that novel in the preceding quote and be glad to hear a character from that book is back. During the Covid-19 pandemic, former teenage delinquent Jesse Fitzgerald, now a detective on the Providence, Rhode Island, police force, meets Molly Ambrose, a 19-year-old prodigy who runs the state’s emergency preparedness and response program. “Despite the fact that there were fifteen years between us and we both had enough baggage to fill a cargo hold,” as Molly puts it, the two fall madly in love. The baggage she’s referring to includes, on her side, a mother who died on 9/11 when Molly was less than three months old. Picoult supplies her signature delightful banter and gift for depicting passion and romance to win the reader’s sympathy for this possibly questionable match between dedicated public servants, whose favorite game at bedtime is “Who can think of the most terrifying worst-case scenario?” Very little more can be revealed without spoilers, but trigger warnings for this book would be a long list indeed, ranging from suicide and filicide to rape and mental illness (welcome to Picoultland!). Subplots visit evangelical and Navajo cultures as well as the ins and outs of polygraphy. Make sure to read the afterword in which Picoult explains her real-life sources of inspiration.
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9780593726259
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.
A chance meeting in a museum unlocks a long-closed door in a family’s past.
Of a piece with her last three novels—Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023)—Patchett’s latest explores the evolution of families over time, romantic secrets, and step-relationships, again giving these topics the wry and tender treatment that is distinctively hers. As it begins, Daphne Fuller’s attentive husband, Jonathan, notices that a man has been following them through the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At first they chalk it up to the fact that “old guys love [Daphne],” as she told Jonathan decades ago, a notion he has held onto "like a souvenir postcard from another era." But it turns out that, though Daphne doesn’t recognize him, Eddie Triplett is her former stepfather. Like the author herself, as recalled in her 2020 essay “Three Fathers,” Daphne has had three dads. Her biological father, a deep-sea fisherman named Buddy Zabriskie, left the family early; her current stepfather, Lucas Ekker, lives with her mother in retirement in Massachusetts. Ekker is an unprepossessing sort Abby met working as the publicist for his self-help books, Positivity!, Positively Positive!, The Positivity Workbook!, Positive Every Day!, ad infinitum. The man in the museum, Eddie Triplett, was also someone her mother met through her job in publishing, and once Daphne realizes who he is, she remembers that “[their] hearts were forever stitched together.” This is because Daphne and Eddie were in a serious car accident when she was 9 years old, after which her mother immediately divorced him and evicted him from their lives. The details of that accident—among them lies the reason the novel is named after a horse called Whistler—are gradually wheedled out of Daphne by her younger sister, Leda, a clinical psychologist in New York and a reliable source of insight on the narrative’s key issues. “‘You make it sound like I’ve been keeping all this from you, but I’m not,’ [Daphne] said. ‘Who goes through life thinking about what happened when they were nine?’ ‘It’s all people think about,’ Leda said.”
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9780063511637
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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