An absorbing and sobering reckoning with all-too-familiar disasters, both personal and planetary.
A Swedish family struggles to cope with climatological disaster.
The von der Esch family—father Didrik, mother Carola, teen daughter Vilja, little brother Zack, and baby Becka—evacuate their summer house in Dalarna as global warming–generated wildfires rage out of control. The author shifts between various family members and characters in their orbit to give first-person accounts of the chaotic aftermath, during which the family is separated (wounded Zack goes off with strangers with a working car; Didrik takes the vulnerable Becka on a crowded train back to Stockholm; Carola and Vilja make their way to an ad hoc refugee camp) and attempts to survive the crisis and hopefully reunite after the worst has passed. The action of the novel is tense, as the oppressive heat, lack of basic resources, and crumbling social contract threaten to overwhelm the embattled clan, but the strongest elements of the narrative are the depth and nuance of the characters’ inner monologues. Didrik, a somewhat pompous PR exec, experiences the catastrophe as a test of his masculinity. Vilja, characterized as selfish and bratty by her father, displays remarkable courage and maturity in navigating the fraught environment of the camp. Didrik’s mistress, Melissa, an ostensibly vacuous social media influencer safely ensconced in a luxury apartment in Stockholm, leads a rich inner life revolving around her pill addiction and borderline sociopathic manipulativeness. André, the teenage son of the tennis legend whose apartment Melissa is housesitting, drowns in insecurities and resentment as he embarks on an ill-advised nautical adventure. A sense of apocalyptic doom throws the relatively petty concerns of the characters into sharp relief even as their humanity is affirmed by the author’s careful attention to their quirks and unique perspectives. There are no villains here aside from climate change—an outward manifestation and inevitable consequence of the self-destructive impulses so relatably embodied by Liljestrand’s cast of haplessly civilized refugees.
An absorbing and sobering reckoning with all-too-familiar disasters, both personal and planetary.Pub Date: May 9, 2023
ISBN: 9781668005019
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
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
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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