by Oleander Blume ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2021
The tears of an alien clown and a startling angle distinguish this engaging SF tale.
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In this YA SF series opener, a teenager—already stressed by his mother’s disappearance—finds life getting more complicated with the arrival of a shape-shifting alien.
The premise of Blume’s tale sounds like a whimsical, 1970s live-action Disney feature (not good news unless it’s Escape to Witch Mountain). But then the story takes an extreme twist at midpoint. Weird science spins 14-year-old Oliver Tarsul’s life out of control. His mother’s dimension-leaping quantum device causes her vanishing and possible death. Her husband, Jon Jariwala, Oliver’s nice but absent-minded-professor–type stepdad, focuses his energies on comprehending her notes and rebuilding the machine to try to return her. Meanwhile, there is a side effect—a shape-shifting alien called Dindet, actually a gelatinous colloid but presenting itself as a sort of little girl clown/jester. She pops in from her realm to haunt Oliver. Jon, taking the creature in stride (especially since Dindet’s advanced math knowledge could help bring his wife back), has the alien enrolled in Oliver’s school as a foreign-exchange student living under their roof. Oliver, of course, is embarrassed and shocked by having to cohabit and attend class with the bizarre clown. Seriocomic antics (including a visit to Dindet’s riotous dimension and gladiatorial games) get darker at midpoint when the author drops a bombshell involving Oliver and his brutal, alcoholic biological father. It is not so much the abrupt shifts in tone that will whipsaw the audience (there are clues aplenty that Oliver is in emotional turmoil; readers will just assume Dindet is the reason) as the contrast between the two narrative threads. A slapstick, first-contact story turns into a vivid portrayal of a troubled family. Imagine warping from E.T. the Extraterrestrial to a serious drama. The author’s matter-of-fact, nonjudgmental treatment of Oliver is commendable (so is the unforced, multicultural background material), and readers will wonder how this story might have played out minus the shape-shifting elements. Still, the alien stuff triggers the intriguing cliffhanger.
The tears of an alien clown and a startling angle distinguish this engaging SF tale.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73794-632-8
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Shaky Alien Publications
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Elin Hilderbrand ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 11, 2024
Though Hilderbrand threatens to kill all our darlings with this last laugh, her acknowledgments say it’s just “for now.”
A stranger comes to town, and a beloved storyteller plays this creative-writing standby for all it’s worth.
Hilderbrand fans, a vast and devoted legion, will remember Blond Sharon, the notorious island gossip. In what is purportedly the last of the Nantucket novels, Blond Sharon decides to pursue her lifelong dream of fiction writing. In the collective opinion of the island—aka the “cobblestone telegraph”—she’s qualified. “Well, we think, she’s certainly demonstrated her keen interest in other people’s stories, the seedier and more salacious, the better.” Blond Sharon’s first assignment in her online creative writing class is to create a two-person character study, and Hilderbrand has her write up the two who arrive on the ferry in an opening scene of the book, using the same descriptors Hilderbrand has. Amusingly, the class is totally unimpressed. “‘I found it predictable,’ Willow said. ‘Like maybe Sharon used ChatGPT with the prompt “Write a character study about two women getting off the ferry, one prep and one punk.”’” Blond Sharon abandons these characters, but Hilderbrand thankfully does not. They are Kacy Kapenash, daughter of retiring police chief Ed Kapenash (the other swan song referred to by the title), and her new friend Coco Coyle, who has given up her bartending job in the Virgin Islands to become a “personal concierge” for the other strangers-who-have-come-to-town. These are the Richardsons, Bull and Leslee, a wild and wealthy couple who have purchased a $22 million beachfront property and plan to take Nantucket by storm. As the book opens, their house has burned down during an end-of-summer party on their yacht, and Coco is missing, feared both responsible for the fire and dead. Though it’s the last weekend of his tenure, Chief Ed refuses to let the incoming chief, Zara Washington, take this one over. The investigation goes forward in parallel with a review of the summer’s intrigues, love affairs, and festivities. Whatever else you can say about Leslee Richardson, she knows how to throw a party, and Hilderbrand is just the writer to design her invitations, menus, themes, playlists, and outfits. And that hot tub!
Though Hilderbrand threatens to kill all our darlings with this last laugh, her acknowledgments say it’s just “for now.”Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9780316258876
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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New York Times Bestseller
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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