Part heartfelt coming-of-age tale, part brutal Irish noir, this is a spectacular read for Donna Tartt and Tana French fans.
Irish author Walsh makes an assured debut with this gritty heartbreaker of a thriller.
On the west coast of Ireland sits the tourist town of Kinlough, where, in 2003, six teenage friends—Kala, Aoife, Helen, Aiden, Joe, and Mush—are enjoying the “summer of [their] lives,” daring each other to race their bikes down a hill across a busy main road, exploring first love, and building tight emotional bonds. When 15-year-old Kala, the gang’s charismatic but troubled leader, disappears in November, the friends’ relationships fracture: “There was no clear point where you made the decision to let your lives unbraid themselves from one another.” Fifteen years later, three of the friends meet up again. Hard-edged Helen, now a freelance journalist living in Canada, has reluctantly returned home for her father’s wedding to Pauline Lyons, Mush’s aunt. Joe, a self-absorbed rock star with a drinking problem, is back to relaunch a local music venue with a summer residency, and the solitary Mush, self-conscious about his facial scars, has never gone anywhere, preferring to sit in his mother’s cafe drinking beer and watching the summer visitors. But the discovery of Kala’s bones at a building site and the disappearance of Mush’s 16-year-old twin cousins propel the trio to reconsider their past in a dangerous search for the truth. Skillfully blending the psychological complexity of a literary novel with the propulsive pace of a thriller, the author juggles three disparate points of view (including a second-person perspective) and two timelines with masterful flair. His striking prose (“hair pineappled into an elegant mess”) is flavored with colorful Irish slang (“beor,” “craic”) without becoming twee. The handy cast of characters clarifies the family relationships, but at times the convoluted plot is confusing as it builds to a haunting conclusion.
Part heartfelt coming-of-age tale, part brutal Irish noir, this is a spectacular read for Donna Tartt and Tana French fans.Pub Date: July 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780385549639
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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