A tragic death and a slew of suspects ignite this incendiary tale.
In Fairhill, Vermont, a community where nothing seems to happen, a violent death exposes the cruelty hiding beneath the town’s supposedly placid surface.
Diana Brewer’s body is found in a farmer’s field, and what initially seems to be a crime novel walking a well-worn path of plot points and tropes instead travels in a new direction. Lapena rolls out a story unique and timely in its telling. No one can imagine who could have killed Diana, a high school senior, and suspicion immediately turns to her possessive boyfriend, Cameron Farrell. He might have been the last person to see her alive, but the police have additional suspects. Any of them may or may not be murderers, but when their interactions with Diana are exposed, it becomes clear none of them is innocent. The throughline in this astutely observed story is that as much as young women want to take charge of their own lives, there are men who want to control and abuse them. Lapena makes sure Diana’s spirit is profoundly present, first as she’s looking down from above on her dead body, then as she observes her mother’s grief, the interrogation of suspects, and the pain her friends suffer as a result of her death. Equally fascinating is the portrayal of the fiancee of one of the suspects, who’s torn between his insistence that he’s not guilty and the strong possibility that he’s not the person she’d planned to marry. As much a commentary on how women’s concerns and accusations are often dismissed as it is an intense crime story, Lapena’s novel excavates the ways so-called responsible adults don’t do enough—a crime in itself—to keep young women like Diana safe. “How many ways,” Diana asks after her death, “can a girl be assaulted?” The novel’s emotional heft will linger with readers.
A tragic death and a slew of suspects ignite this incendiary tale.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9780593489963
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
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
Red-hot storytelling.
Two master storytellers create one explosive thriller.
Mauna Loa is going to blow within days—“the biggest damn eruption in a century”—and John “Mac” MacGregor of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory leads a team trying to fend off catastrophe. Can they vent the volcano? Divert the flow of blistering hot lava? The city of Hilo is but a few miles down the hill from the world’s largest active volcano and will likely be in the path of a 15-foot-high wall of molten menace racing toward them at 50 miles an hour. “You live here, you always worry about the big one,” Mac says, and this could be it. There’s much more, though. The U.S. Army swoops in, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff personally “drafts” Mac into the Army. Then Mac learns the frightening secret of the Army’s special interest in Mauna Loa, and suddenly the stakes fly far, far beyond Hilo. Perhaps they can save the world, but the odds don’t look good. Readers will sympathize with Mac, who teaches surfing to troubled teens and for whom “taking chances is part of his damned genetic code.” But no one takes chances like the aerial cowboy Jake Rogers and the photographer who hires him to fly over the smoldering, burbling, rock-spitting hellhole. Some of the action scenes will make readers’ eyes pop as the tension continues to build. As with any good thriller, there’s a body count, but not all thrillers have blackened corpses surfing lava flows. The story is the brainchild of the late Crichton, who did a great deal of research but died in 2008 before he could finish the novel. His widow handed the project to James Patterson, who weaves Crichton’s work into a seamless summer read.
Red-hot storytelling.Pub Date: June 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780316565073
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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