Striking characters drive this worthwhile batch of unnerving stories.
Everyday people become entangled with unavoidable terrors in Kane’s collection of creepy tales.
The book begins with “Past Is Prologue,” in which Marcus vows to marry Rufina, a slave he’s completely fallen for. But their love blossoms in Herculaneum, the ancient Roman town that readers know Mt. Vesuvius will doom. Many of the 12 stories that follow are plays on familiar figures or horror scenarios. “The Last Bride” takes place in early 17th-century Hungary, where a certain Elizabet Bàthory makes a connection with a mercenary who goes by the name of Dracul. The titular “Suzanne” finds a potential romantic interest in police officer Jericho as the two bond while holed up in a local police station during a zombie apocalypse. The author offers a few selections that stray from more common genre tropes; “Dokkaebi” features a 1400-year-old shapeshifting goblin from Korean mythology. The author builds solid foundations for these tales, from the mood-setting environments (“Before Iraq, he never noticed the various shades of green sported by the aspens, oaks, walnuts, and other leafy trees of West Virginia. Soon the green would change to a blaze of yellows, oranges, and reds”) to the well-drawn casts. The characters include couples in unstable marriages; a ginseng hunter and his estranged surrogate father; and a popular doctor of theology alongside his president-elect son. Kane’s unadorned prose rarely lingers on the violent bits; his straightforward approach occasionally results in tales that, even with monsters in the mix, aren’t so scary. Still, he delivers shocking turns, whether in the form of a surprise ending or a character’s unexpected revelation. Galal’s black-and-white artwork accompanies each story, illustrating such haunting moments as grieving in the falling rain and recalling images from a fuzzy memory.
Striking characters drive this worthwhile batch of unnerving stories.Pub Date: May 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781087963365
Page Count: 280
Publisher: C2 Visionary Press
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PROFILES
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.
Three siblings on very different paths learn that their family home may be haunted by secrets.
Eldest daughter Beth is alone with her fading mother as she takes her final breath and says something about Beth’s long-departed brother and sister, who may not have disappeared forever. Beth is still reeling from the loss of her mother when her estranged siblings show up. Michael, the youngest, hasn’t been home since their father’s disappearance seven years ago. In the meantime, he’s outgrown his siblings, trading his share of the family troubles for a high-paying job in San Jose. Nicole, the middle child, has been overpowered by addiction and prioritized tuning out reality over any sense of responsibility, much to Beth’s disgust. Though their mother’s death marks an ending for the family, it’s also a beginning, as the three siblings realize when they find a disturbing videotape among their parents’ belongings. The video, from 1999, sheds suspicion on their father’s disappearance, linking it to a long-unsolved neighborhood mystery. Was it just a series of unfortunate circumstances that broke the family apart, or does something more sinister underlie the sadness they’ve all found in life? In chapters that rotate among the family’s first-person narratives, the siblings take turns digging up stories and secrets in their search for solace.
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798212182843
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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