Fun—if overly familiar—vampire fiction made palatable by memorable characters.
In Wilson’s supernatural thriller, a young woman discovers she has a rare, supernatural gift after surviving a tragic accident.
All things considered, Sarah Woodward ought not to be alive. When the bus she was on swerved off the road and plunged into Elliott Bay, Sarah was the sole survivor among the 15 victims. Not only did she survive, she had the presence of mind and absence of injury to swim to shore, where she found herself physically (if not emotionally) unscathed. Soon after, though, strange things begin happening to Sarah; she feels, somehow, both alive and dead, as though trapped in a sort of purgatory. Small injuries to her skin heal almost instantaneously, and she keeps having the same dream of a mysterious cave that feels inherently familiar to her but that she cannot place in memory or the real world. While at an art gallery, seeking out some normalcy in the aftermath of these upheavals to her reality, she meets a young-looking man with a keen, almost stalker-like interest in her, and, despite her best instincts, she goes to a second location with him. She discovers, quickly, that this man, Alex Smith, is not young at all; in fact, he’s a vampire, and more than three centuries old. He has been looking for Sarah ever since the bus crash she survived—he witnessed the whole thing, his vampiric senses able to trace her far-off heartbeat as he heard all the others go silent. Around the time she meets Alex, Sarah is also questioned in the bookstore where she works by a mysterious stranger, Lucy Goodspeed, who claims to work for a shadowy organization known as the “Society of Keepers.” Before Sarah has a chance to talk with Lucy, she and Alex discover something troubling: Sarah’s blood has the capacity to make Alex “alive” again, at least somewhat—after tasting a mere dribble, he’s breathing again, temporarily, for the first time in centuries. When this experiment nearly kills him, Sarah decides it’s time to talk to the Society of Keepers, hoping to get some answers—but the mystery only deepens when, unprompted, Lucy shows Sarah a photograph of that very cave she’s been dreaming of for weeks…
In her first novel, Wilson has managed to find an interesting wrinkle in the classic vampire narrative in the character of Sarah, a sort of supernatural foil who is not the typical werewolf or vaguely Christian ideological crusader, which helps to make this vampire yarn feel at least a bit fresh. That being said, readers’ appetites for sentences like “I can’t tell her I’ve started falling insanely too fast for someone who happens to be a vampire” have been eroded by decades of teen-lit plumbing the exact same dynamics. The plotting sometimes feels too convenient—one wonders about that chance meeting at the art museum—but there is real pathos to Sarah’s character, who feels like a friend from college you’ve mostly forgotten about but who now finds herself in extraordinary circumstances. Fans of vampire fiction won’t find much new here, but those open to an undead thread running through an engaging narrator’s strange experience will enjoy the ride.
Fun—if overly familiar—vampire fiction made palatable by memorable characters.Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9798989867516
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Hair-raising fun!
Two strange deaths in the desert pose tough questions in this fifth Nora Kelly adventure.
In a remote section of New Mexico, a woman walks alone into the blistering desert heat. In a trance, she ignores her horrific thirst and discards her clothing, piece by piece, until she lies down and dies. Five years later, a video crew with a drone discovers her skeletal remains, which they promptly report. Agent Corrie Swanson is part of an FBI team that heads out into the bleak badlands to investigate. She shares a photo with anthropologist Nora Kelly, who is especially intrigued by the pair of rare green lightning stones found under the skeleton. The woman died with perfect health, yet no one had reported her missing. DNA confirms the 40-ish woman was Molly Vine, an apparently vibrant person who “wouldn’t just throw her life away.” Then the FBI finds another body, another woman, same trail of clothing and pair of green lightning stones, but her death is much more recent. And that’s just the beginning of a tale that gets curiouser and curiouser with discoveries of ancient mass murders and modern mind control. Corrie and Nora are a perfect pair: smart and professional, and with bravery they will need in abundance. At one point, they compare approaches: As an anthropologist, Nora is trained not to judge; as an FBI agent, Corrie is trained to judge. As they delve into the investigation, Nora’s younger brother, Skip, and his billionaire buddy, Edison Nash, complicate matters immensely. They decide to go camping and investigate on their own, and Skip reminds Nash that taking ancient artifacts like an obsidian arrowhead is a felony. But as strange shadows lurk around their faded campfire at night, they learn that getting in trouble with the law is the least of their worries. The landscape imbues a special flavor to this engrossing yarn—the adobe kivas with signs of thousand-year-old murders, the slot canyons, the changing terrain as desert yields to ponderosa pine—and the sandstorms that can abort a rescue. In this setting, an unknown enemy causes cringeworthy violence that the heroes may have to face alone. But as Corrie tells Nora, “We’ve got a gun. We’ve got a knife. Now we need a plan.”
Hair-raising fun!Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9781538765821
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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