An entertaining, if somewhat lightweight, coming-of-age adventure.
Four teenage Texans find themselves stranded on a forbidding, inaccessible island in this novel.
William Flynn and his friends Brian Johnson, Randy Moss, and Miguel Gonzalez are subject to repeated bouts of bullying from the local Thousand Oaks Gang. One day, a school security guard intervenes when the gang attacks, and the bullies flee, leaving behind a rucksack containing a large quantity of money and marijuana. William hides the bag at his house, and when the gang comes looking for it, he doesn’t answer their questions, which inevitably leads to further violent encounters. On a camping trip, the boys meet Tony and Victoria, two 18-year-olds who work on the lake, and they strike up a friendship with them. The boys later spend a weekend at the lakeside in an old abandoned mansion that William calls the Cabin of Seclusion;when members of the Thousand Oaks Gang arrive, however, the kids are forced to flee by boat, which, due to poor navigation, finds them stranded on an island surrounded by jagged rocks. A possibly poisonous snake bites Randy, Brian can’t swim, and without shelter or an obvious source of food, all of the boys find themselves in a very bad situation. In an afterword, Semegran makes no secret of his admiration for William Golding’s classic 1954 novel, Lord of the Flies and Stephen King’s 1982 novella The Body, on which the popular 1986 film Stand by Me was based. It shows in his own work, as he puts the dynamics of adolescent friendships at the heart of his story, although the narrative doesn’t really carry the same weight as Golding’s. The group dynamic doesn’t shift significantly on the island, either; there are no power struggles, divisive politics, or moral dilemmas, which saps some of the narrative’s power. The novel’s pacing is somewhat inconsistent, as well, with a long buildup to the island scenes and a relatively lengthy where-are-they-now coda. Overall, though, this is an absorbing, nostalgic, and polished story that will likely find its readership.
An entertaining, if somewhat lightweight, coming-of-age adventure.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-08-785685-8
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Mutt Press
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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