A measured but engrossing tale of a tightknit community’s strength.
In this debut novel, a world traveler visits an island off the U.S. coast and mingles in good—as well as dangerous—company.
Globe-trotting Judah Goodwin’s latest destination is the United States. But the ship he’s on drops him off at, as the helmsman puts it, “Almost America”—the small island Rio Los Angeles sitting somewhere between Nova Scotia and Maine. Judah, a kind, capable man, quickly befriends the islanders, especially when he helps prevent a house from tipping and sliding into the ocean. Rio Los Angeles has a rich history, as some families have lived there for generations. This includes the Mirandas and the Eldridges, who share a bit of bad blood stemming from a fatal car accident more than a decade ago. Judah grows close to local sheriff Lee Miranda and even joins her profitable “quahog project.” Many islanders band together to harvest these quahogs, large clams that will spruce up anyone’s clam chowder. Sadly, not everyone on the island is neighborly, as three strangers make their way there and seem dead set on ransacking underwater quahog pens. These abrasive men also prove violent toward locals, forcing Lee and others to track them down as swiftly as possible. Meanwhile, Judah learns the ship that left him at the island has sunk with apparently no survivors. This news sparks his memories of the captain, who not only was up to no good, but may have used him as an unwitting courier for looted goods. It’s not long before a menacing individual comes looking for whatever Judah has.
Kent’s leisurely paced story devotes pages to work on the island. Characters, for example, discuss the quahog project and a later plan to harvest sea salt. Other scenes describe the laborious process of digging, packaging, and hauling clams. Many of the details, however, give the narrative color, including the stories that Judah and the islanders trade. He tells of his global travels, from the daily catches of fishing communities in Tanzania, East Africa, to a vault for storing seeds of worldly food crops on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. This is moreover indicative of the author’s sharp prose. Scenes at sea are particularly strong, even with minimal context for readers unfamiliar with nautical terminology: “They rafted the skiff to the Lydia. There was a mismatch in height and there were swells in the current. But foam rubber fenders hanging from Lydia’s gunwale cushioned a rhythmic bumping of the vessels.” While there’s little in the way of individual character development, certain moments pack a punch; a woman endures and recovers from a vicious assault, and more than one islander dies, deaths that unquestionably affect the community. At the same time, potential romance between Judah and Lee is sublimely understated; she calls him Chesapeake (a nod to Judah’s home), an endearing name that only Lee uses. Most of the Rio Los Angeles locals, too, are accommodating; Judah fits in so well with the rest of the cast that one may think the world traveler is not merely visiting but there to stay.
A measured but engrossing tale of a tightknit community’s strength.Pub Date: June 30, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 383
Publisher: Luminare Press
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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