An expertly twisted sequel fully worthy of its celebrated original.
How do you extend the oeuvre of a deceased author who mostly avoided continuing characters? Burke, who collaborated with Clark on several novels before her passing, comes up with a most ingenious way.
In Where Are the Children? (1975), Clark’s very first novel, Melissa and Mike Eldredge were kidnapped by their mother's ex-husband. A generation later, Melissa is a seasoned prosecutor whose high-profile success in getting the murder conviction of an abused woman vacated launched her on a second career as a true-crime podcaster. She's just married geologist Charlie Miller, who’s been raising his 3-year-old daughter, Riley, by himself since the accidental death of his first wife, Linda, soon after the girl's birth. History repeats itself in the most traumatic way imaginable three months later when Riley vanishes shortly after Melissa is confronted by an unfamiliar woman at the playground: "I know all about you," the stranger had said. "You're a fraud. And a hypocrite." Since Charlie, who’s off on a job in the Caribbean, has a solid alibi, Suffolk County Detectives Heather Hall and Guy Marino perversely fasten on Melissa as their most likely suspect. Worse yet, Grant Macintosh, the friend and former colleague Melissa asks to step in as Charlie’s lawyer on his return to Long Island, informs her that his responsibility to Charlie limits the help he can provide her and even the contact he can allow between the spouses. And Charlie himself seems ever more distant from Melissa, who feels painfully ripped away not only from her stepdaughter, but from her family, her friends, and her bridegroom. Whom can she possibly trust at this moment of supreme stress—and will her trust be repaid or betrayed?
An expertly twisted sequel fully worthy of its celebrated original.Pub Date: April 18, 2023
ISBN: 9781982189419
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.
Hung out to dry by the elders who betrayed them, a squad of pregnant teens fights back with old magic.
Hendrix has a flair for applying inventive hooks to horror, and this book has a good one, chock-full with shades of V.C. Andrews, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Foxfire, to name a few. Our narrator, Neva Craven, is 15 and pregnant, a fate worse than death in the American South circa 1970. She’s taken by force to Wellwood House in Florida, a secretive home for unwed mothers where she’s given the name Fern. She’ll have the baby secretly and give it up for adoption, whether she likes it or not. Under the thumb of the house’s cruel mistress, Miss Wellwood, and complicit Dr. Vincent, Neva forges cautious alliance with her fellow captives—a new friend, Zinnia; budding revolutionary Rose; and young Holly, raped and impregnated by the very family minister slated to adopt her child. All seems lost until the arrival of a mysterious bookmobile and its librarian, Miss Parcae, who gives the girls an actual book of spells titled How To Be a Groovy Witch. There’s glee in seeing the powerless granted some well-deserved payback, but Hendrix never forgets his sweet spot, lacing the story with body horror and unspeakable cruelties that threaten to overwhelm every little victory. In truth, it’s not the paranormal elements that make this blast from the past so terrifying—although one character evolves into a suitably scary antagonist near the end—but the unspeakable, everyday atrocities leveled at children like these. As the girls lose their babies one by one, they soon devote themselves to secreting away Holly and her child. They get some help late in the game but for the most part they’re on their own, trapped between forces of darkness and society’s merciless judgement.
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780593548981
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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