Another scary winner from an accomplished pro.
The Hollows is once again a poor choice for someone trying to keep a secret in this latest thriller from best-selling author Unger (Heartbroken, 2012, etc.).
This time, it’s Sacred Heart College in the upstate New York town that attracts an unhappy outsider seeking refuge. Lana Granger remains haunted by her mother’s murder; her father, still on death row for the crime, keeps trying to make contact with her. You might wonder, given Lana’s memories of her “appalling” childhood behavior and its role in the violent dysfunction of her parents’ marriage, why she would take a job baby sitting for 11-year-old Luke, who attends a nearby school for disturbed kids and is exactly the sort of manipulative, “callous-unemotional” deemed most likely to become a full-blown psychopath by experts like Lana’s psychology professor, Langdon Hewes. But Lana feels a strange bond with Luke, and Unger skillfully ratchets up the tension as we begin to realize the boy knows far more about Lana’s past than he should, while diary entries interspersed with the main narrative document horrifying behavior by a malicious child we assume is Luke. It soon becomes clear that neither Lana nor the diary entries are what they seem, and it seems frighteningly likely that our troubled protagonist had something to do with her best friend Beck’s disappearance. But Unger pulls off a bravura feat of misdirection with Lana’s guilty secret and a terrific aha! moment with the revelation of the first of several villains, each fingered with clues carefully planted throughout the text. The book’s emotional logic isn’t as impeccable as its plotting: We’re asked to believe that one dangerously unstable child can grow up and learn to love with the help of therapy and lots of meds, while another with virtually identical issues will always be a monster. Few readers will dwell on this inconsistency as they savor the pleasure of being guided by Unger’s sure hand along a deliciously twisted narrative path.
Another scary winner from an accomplished pro.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4516-9117-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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