A striking, character-driven tale about a disturbed woman and her quirky world.
In this novel, a troubled college student takes a trip down Memory Lane—a past that’s only in her head.
It’s been mere months since Erica Edwards graduated from a South Carolina high school. Now, Erica has decided to adopt the persona of Savannah D’Bergeolet. Savannah is frustrated that her parents and older brother, Roy, can’t remember the family’s history—her father was a perpetually drunk shrimper and a Marine fighter pilot, and they’ve all alienated her twin brother, Chicken John. But none of it is true; she doesn’t even have a twin. Still, Savannah is positive that she’ll reunite with Chicken John in Charleston. She takes an impromptu road trip to the picturesque city with her naïve friend Mitzi Bedenbaugh. At times, Savannah can be offensive; for example, the White woman assumes people of color are uneducated. But she can be dangerous as well. She’s convinced certain people belong to “the Ten,” an evil, racist secret society—not unlike Pat Conroy’s The Lords of Discipline, as Savannah believes she lives inside Southern authors’ fictional stories. In the real world, her distressed family searches for the missing Erica. Roy goes out on his own, a far cry from the online community and games that usually monopolize his time. Savannah also has an unexpected effect on her college writing professor, Creighton Starke. As this one-time author struggles to decide where his life will take him next, he peruses Savannah’s manuscript, Lowcountry Lamentations. These periodic excerpts give Creighton (and readers) insights into the quixotic world Savannah has created and completely immersed herself in.
Malmsteen’s dark comedy has its share of lighthearted moments. Savannah’s amateurish manuscript, for example, is rife with typos and silly turns, like her childhood story of an Orkin man’s sudden obsession with her beautiful mother. Nevertheless, the tale’s more somber elements will hit readers the hardest. Savannah is undeniably unwell, and her misguided confidence that the “characters” in her book—herself, Mitzi, and a passenger they pick up along the way—are relatively safe actually puts them in jeopardy. Roy doesn’t fare much better in his search, and both he and his sister run into trouble with the law. The author excels at character development; the story is told from the narrative perspectives of Savannah, Roy, and Creighton. Savannah remains intriguing throughout the tale. The two men evolve dramatically, and one of them turns into a much more unsavory character by the end. There’s a handful of nods to Southern authors, like Dorothea Benton Frank and Anne Rivers Siddons. At one point, Savannah speaks to Mitzi like Bull Meechum in Conroy’s The Great Santini(“Come on, sportsfans!”). But Malmsteen boasts an indelible prose that’s all his own: “The metal rattled underneath the wheels to the point that even a brave man would have felt his sword hand stutter, and with the windows down as they were, each passing car sounded like the noise one hears the moment before a long-dead grandparent beckons from within the pleasant haze of white light.” Staying true to the novel’s overall tone, the denouement is offbeat and a bit unnerving.
A striking, character-driven tale about a disturbed woman and her quirky world.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 223
Publisher: Broad River Books
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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