The child narrator’s perspective builds surprisingly effective suspense and horror.
An Earth-loving collective turns sinister.
Lucien has no memory of life before House of Earth, his colorful upstate New York private school, where his classmates are “friends” and his teacher is a “mentor.” Students spend their days learning about the natural world, naming animals, plants, and trees, and learning how to live in “harmony” as a “collective.” Yet some of the lessons are stricter than others, like when Lucien is publicly reprimanded by Jack for painting his birdhouse black because it’s “negative” or when the class gets in trouble for attending a fellow student’s pool party. Lucien’s mother works at House of Earth, so she consistently and gently reinforces these lessons, especially the beneficence of House of Earth’s founder, O.C. Leroux. In the aftermath of 9/11 and the start of the war with Afghanistan, the collective begins to build dormitories and a wall to keep their people in and everyone else out. But it isn’t until friends begin disappearing that Lucien truly starts to wonder whether House of Earth may not be the utopia it claims to be. The novel follows Lucien as he grows, so the observations and voice of the early parts are childlike; Lucien sees everything but often doesn’t comprehend the true significance of Jack’s lectures or punishments or his mother’s lessons. This creates additional suspense, as the reader knows from the beginning that something is seriously awry despite the beatific vision offered by the collective. It’s hard not to root for Lucien and to desperately hope that his mother will save him, for their bond is lovingly conveyed throughout the first half of the book. Though Barkan never uses the word cult, House of Earth is chillingly evocative of many, and as the novel takes its darker turns, the end is both shocking and inevitable.
The child narrator’s perspective builds surprisingly effective suspense and horror.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-3715-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.
More than a decade after a Georgia man is convicted of a monstrous double murder, an uncomfortably similar crime frees him and resets the search for the guilty party.
In Clifton County, home to the Rich Cliftons and the other Cliftons, the disappearance of teens Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker during the Halloween festivities hits everyone in North Falls hard. Working with her father, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, Deputy Emmy Lou Clifton hears the clock ticking down as she races frantically to get leads on the two friends, who’d been secretly plotting to take off for Atlanta after some undisclosed big score. As a longtime friend of Madison’s mother, Hannah, Emmy hopes against hope to find the missing teens before they’re both dead. By the time Emmy’s hopes are dashed, two unpleasantly likely suspects with strong attachments to underage sex partners have emerged, and one of them ends up in prison. In a bold move, Slaughter jumps over the next 12 years to the case of Paisley Walker, a 14-year-old whose disappearance catches the eye of retiring FBI criminal psychologist Jude Archer, who promptly crosses the country to come to Clifton County and take charge—um, that is, consult—on this heartrending new investigation. Emmy, suddenly and shockingly deprived of counsel from the parents who’ve supported her all her life, doesn’t get along any better with Jude than with the larger circle of Cliftons and the Clifton-Cliftons. But together they identify one new suspect, then another, before a shootout that arrives so early you just know there are still more surprises to come.
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780063336773
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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