A creepily convincing depiction of the marriage of corporate power and celebrity worship.
In Galvin’s future-fiction novel, everyone’s value is determined by how much corporations bid for them.
Sasha Cross, the look-alike daughter of a famous deceased actor, faces an unpleasant situation as she comes of age in a dystopian future. “I’m about to turn twenty-two,” she says, “yet I have no say in what happens to me.” At 22, citizens are auctioned off to corporate entities who will pay retirement benefits to their parents while reaping 25% of their lifelong income. People are ranked—the elite A’s, professional B’s, middle-class C’s, and laborer D’s. Ambitious parents become “asset managers” as they try to maximize their children’s potential earnings in order to ensure their own security. As Sasha tries to negotiate a future where she can find some meaning outside the artificial glamour of Los Angeles celebrity, she struggles to avoid being exploited by those seeking to profit from her resemblance to her adored mother, including her social-climbing friend Brianna and even her own father, who forces her to participate in a reality show about her auction experience. One of her only supporters is her childhood friend Jason, a prominent video game basketball star. Jason, however, faces his own demons in the form of alcoholism and his relationship with a felon who is determined to drag Jason into his illegal schemes. Galvin’s dystopian vision of a celebrity-obsessed society isn’t new, but it’s exceptionally well realized. Thoughtful social critique, romance, friendship, and family dysfunction play out among a complex cast of characters. Other pluses include a taut storyline of corporate ruthlessness versus grassroots resistance and fantastic SF imaginings—from the wholesale insertion of tracking chips to a massive underground system of organ harvesting.
A creepily convincing depiction of the marriage of corporate power and celebrity worship.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73751-500-5
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Drexel Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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