Great characters abound in this romantic fantasy tale of magic, curses, and true love.
A Halloween game with a cash prize turns into a battle with an ancient witch and a chance at true love in Burright’s romantic fantasy novel.
Maggie O’Malley needs a quick influx of cash, or her family home will be auctioned off to pay the loans and taxes that her deadbeat ex-husband refused to pay. When her best friend, Wendy Hayes, learns of a “Magic, Moonlight, and Mayhem” contest in Ireland with a cash prize of $500,000, she convinces Maggie to join in. Maggie and Wendy stay on the Ravenwood Estate in Ireland and meet the handsome, eligible Ravenwood twins, Caedmon and Kellen. Maggie doesn’t believe in all the woo-woo spiritual stuff involved in the competition, but she’s willing to fake it for a chance to start her life over. Wendy gets sick immediately after they get to their rooms, leaving Maggie to face the challenges alone. It transpires that Kellen has been cursed for six centuries, and this is his last chance at freedom before succumbing entirely (“Seven days to either true freedom or eternal imprisonment”). Caedmon believes the solution is a human sacrifice, something Kellen refuses, especially when he learns that the one human who could break his curse is not just the original spellcaster’s descendant—one Maggie O’Malley—but his fated true love. Burright’s romantic fantasy packs a lot of action into one novel. The contest, Maggie’s ostensible reason for being in Ireland, fades into the background as the story progresses, and the rituals performed as part of the competition feel underdeveloped and almost childish. It’s clear the author concentrated more on developing the characters and the love story, and it was time well spent: Kellen is open and honest with Maggie, expresses his love and devotion to his brother, and refuses to compromise his values, making him stand out in a world of literary alpha males.
Great characters abound in this romantic fantasy tale of magic, curses, and true love.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781649379535
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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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