A raw look at the toll that molestation takes on victims.
A 22-year-old Hollywood star—discovered in London as a young teen—tries to come to terms with the molestation and bullying she experienced early in her acting career.
Grace Turner seems to have it all—beauty, wit, acting chops, and a reputation as the muse for famous Hollywood director Able Yorke. However, behind that public facade, she is spiraling out of control as she uses alcohol and drugs to escape her life. And then, on the cusp of awards season, she disappears from the public eye. She spends the year quietly—and soberly—going through the routine that life at her parents’ house in Anaheim allows. She has a complicated relationship with everyone and everything: her parents, whom she distanced herself from as her star was rising; her sister, who was too young when she left home to be a friend; her husband, whom she holds up as a saint; the various women who try to become her friends but might only be pretending; and the drugs and alcohol that allowed her to distance herself from Able and the ugliness behind the glossy, picture-perfect scenes. When Grace returns to Los Angeles after her year away, she struggles with her future. Able and his wife, Emilia, loom large in her psyche—he as her tormentor and benefactor, and she as the woman who was supposed to look over her, but didn’t. Is Grace seeking revenge and an opportunity to destroy Able completely? A comeback? She isn’t sure herself. Readers familiar with the downfall of film producer Harvey Weinstein will see the influence of current events on this story, which is filled with tension and stress as the reader tries to predict what will happen next. Not all readers will be pleased with the ending.
A raw look at the toll that molestation takes on victims.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593099-51-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.
A routine break-in at the home of Sûreté homicide chief Armand Gamache leads slowly but surely to the revelation of a potentially calamitous threat to all Québec.
At first it seems as if nothing at all triggered the burglar alarm at Gamache’s home in Three Pines; it was literally a false alarm. It’s not till he receives a package containing his summer jacket that Gamache realizes someone really did get into his house, choosing to steal exactly this one item and return it with a cryptic note referring to “some malady…water” and “Angelica stems.” Having already refused to meet with Jeanne Caron, chief of staff to Marcus Lauzon, a powerful politician who’s already taken vengeance on Gamache and his family for not expunging his child’s criminal record, Gamache now agrees to meet with Charles Langlois, a marine biologist with ties to Caron who confesses to a leading role in stealing Gamache’s jacket. Their meeting ends inconclusively for Gamache, who’s convinced that Langlois is hiding something weighty, and all too conclusively for Langlois, who’s killed by a hit-and-run driver as he leaves. The news that Langlois had been investigating a water supply near the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups sends Gamache scurrying off to the abbey, where the plot steadily thickens until he’s led to ask how “an old recipe for Chartreuse” can possibly be connected to “a terrorist plot to poison Québec’s drinking water.” That’s a great question, and answering it will take the second half of this story, which spins ever more intricate connections among leading players that become deeply unsettling.
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250328137
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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
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