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
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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