An exciting, romantic tale anchored in a great sense of place.
In this paranormal romance, a man returns to his hometown, where he must learn truths about his family, join a battle against supernatural evil, and save the man he loves.
When Cooper Causey was an 8-year-old boy in Georgetown, South Carolina, he had a terrifying encounter at Warfield, an abandoned plantation, with the ghost of Blue, a slave who’d led a murderous revolt. Blue sent a jolt through Cooper that left a coiled energy in the boy—one that he still, 20 years later, deeply distrusts. Cooper left Georgetown and its uncomfortable memories behind long ago, but an alarming message from his beloved grandmother Lillie Mae sends him back. After he arrives, he discovers that Lillie Mae has disappeared and that someone has written the word “Warfield” in blood in the family Bible. He calls the cops, and Cooper’s boyhood crush RJ, now a police officer, responds; he now goes by the name Randy, and Cooper finds him more devastatingly attractive than ever. Later, Cooper investigates at the Warfield plantation, where he finds that two vampirelike creatures are holding his grandmother hostage. It turns out that his family history puts him at the center of an ageslong struggle between forces of light and darkness. To fight evil, he must learn to embrace his own powers, including the dark energy that Blue liberated in him. He and a team of vampire slayers join in several exciting battles in which Randy, too, has a role to play. In this debut novel, Howard handles the complicated plot nicely, building its dramatic events to a satisfying conclusion. His characters, including the supernatural ones, are varied and well-drawn. Although vampires, angels, and similar creatures are nothing new on the scene, Howard makes his concept fresh through good dialogue, a vivid setting, and Cooper’s personality, which combines brashness with sweetness. The relationship between Cooper and Randy, while slow to heat up, adds some welcome lightness to all the horror. The author also makes wonderful use of real-life Georgetown locations, such as the Rice Museum, to add realistic details that make it easier to suspend one’s disbelief. The ending suggests that Cooper and friends have more work to do—a good thing for readers.
An exciting, romantic tale anchored in a great sense of place.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 271
Publisher: Wilde City Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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