A sharp, edgy caper with a final surprise.
A dark novel brings together a collection of emotionally compromised characters whose lives unfortunately intersect in Italy.
Stefano Orso, who is beginning to age out of the escort market, is in Berlin when readers meet him. He is there to steal a wooden box. Now supplementing his dwindling income by moving into the burglary business, he is carrying out an assignment for a dangerous man known only as Flavio. But things go very wrong, and Stef barely escapes, empty-handed. Thus begins a series of misadventures. Stef flies home to Milan. There, he runs into Beatrice at a gathering, where she mistakenly thought she was going to hook up with a man named Paolo she had been flirting with online. As it turns out, Paolo is there with Elena, a beautiful, elegant designer who travels with a coterie of admirers. When Stef—with whom Beatrice had enjoyed a short, ill-fated affair years ago—unexpectedly joins the group, she decides to renew their acquaintance. There is an instant magnetism between the two, an attraction she will have reason to rue. Petruzziello’s narrative is a meandering, vicarious, touristy escapade through Milan featuring the city’s architectural and artistic highlights as well as upscale eateries, quirky nightclubs, and one local bar where Beatrice waitresses. In the restroom of this bar, Stef discovers an apparently dead patron, who fell and hit his head on the washroom sink. Afraid of calling the police, Stef convinces Beatrice to help him dispose of the corpse, involving her in a twisty plot in which nothing goes as planned—especially after the body reappears at the bar. With a talent for piercing the vainglorious veneer of his hapless protagonists, the author lightens the murder-and-mayhem action with biting humor. Readers know who Stef is from the first page, when, in the middle of the Berlin burglary, he pauses to gaze at his satisfying reflection in the mirror: “He just couldn’t help himself.” Morose secondary character Kevin Benton, an American unwittingly ensnared by Flavio, serves as the vehicle for the moody tale’s one serious message.
A sharp, edgy caper with a final surprise.Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73506-542-7
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Magnusmade
Review Posted Online: Dec. 31, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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