A groundbreaking and excellent queer historical romance.
A second chance for a duke and his best friend.
The Battle of Waterloo changed Viola Carroll’s life, because everyone believes she died there. In fact, after recovering from her wounds, she made the bold decision to walk away from her inheritance and her title and into a new life: She was finally free to live as a woman. Unbeknownst to her, however, her best friend’s life was also changed by the loss of the friend he thinks he left on the battlefield. Justin de Vere, Duke of Gracewood, hides in the country, debilitated by symptoms of PTSD, terrible war injuries, and an addiction to laudanum and alcohol. His would be a solitary life except that he still serves as his sister Miranda’s guardian. When Miranda writes to Lady Marleigh, Viola’s sister-in-law, describing her brother’s decline over the past two years, Lady Marleigh decides that she and Viola (who now serves as her paid companion) must go save Miranda. Viola is terrified to travel, not only because Gracewood thinks his best friend is dead, but also because he’s never known her as a woman. When they arrive, Gracewood is depressed, drunk, and doesn’t realize he already knows Viola, so she agrees when Lady Marleigh suggests she try to help him get better. From their respective hiding places, Viola and Gracewood find they share an undeniable connection; eventually Gracewood realizes he’s known Viola his whole life, and the best friends begin to fall in love despite the complications. Author Hall is a consistently beautiful writer, but this story, the first in a new series, may be his best yet. The plot elegantly balances period details and classic tropes to create a queer love story with a pitch-perfect blend of reality and hope. Though the steamy intimate scenes are electric, the story’s momentum comes not from Viola and Gracewood’s slow burn but from the genuine emotional connections among a full cast of charming characters. Despite the centering of Viola and Gracewood’s love story, this is a book that celebrates the many ways people love and are loved. The story is complex and long but never lags, and readers will be glued to the book through the satisfying epilogue. As a bonus, Hall also wrote the funny, insightful discussion questions at the back, allowing readers space to dwell a bit longer on the story.
A groundbreaking and excellent queer historical romance.Pub Date: May 24, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5387-5375-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Forever
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.
The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.
Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead.
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757901
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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