An entertaining magical-realist tale of a marriage threatened by an infidelity.
Two women fight over a man by slightly supernatural means in this novel about bad relationships.
Brewer’s tale triangulates Rawley Aimes, the first mate on an oil tanker; his wife, Marina, a pulchritudinous architect in Rio de Janeiro; and his lover, Lil, the ship’s cook, a blowsy redhead who holds him in erotic thrall. Marina pines for Rawley while he’s at sea but is beset by visions of him copulating sweatily with Lil and reading erotic poetry to her. When Rawley returns to Rio on shore leave, Marina plies him with food and sex. But Rawley, drunk, dejected, and mesmerized by a vision of Lil undergoing a Santeria ritual, tells the distraught Marina that he wants a divorce. His resolve is complicated yet not deterred when he swims to an isolated beach and meets Sibele, a teenager who reads his fortune from tarot cards and tells him that things probably won’t work out with Lil but that Marina will take him back. Rawley jets off to a vacation with Lil in Costa Rica, and she indeed proves to be a handful. She’s hypersexual but also grumpy, soused, and enraged by the rainy weather. Things seem to improve when the sun returns, but then Rawley abruptly dumps Lil in a scene that plays out in alternating bouts of tearful recrimination, histrionic guilt, and sex. Marina welcomes Rawley back as predicted, but once in Rio, he lapses into his old funk, drinking and dreaming of Lil. When Lil calls, he promises to return to her. At wits’ end, Marina hires a seer who tells fortunes from random Bible verses. The psychic senses a malevolent presence in the apartment and, when Rawley’s reading is unusually morbid, hints that witchcraft may be afoot.
Brewer’s yarn features tense domestic drama, lurid rites, vividly atmospheric writing—“A blood red moon hung heavy in the lower sky above the waves, rheumy and dull, like the eye of a killer”—and some well-wrought action set pieces, like an attempted rescue at sea during a raging storm. (“The lifeboat groaned and popped under the strain and visibly bowed between the two logs, which worked to stove it in. The rescuers watched in horror as blood began to pour from the little man’s nose and mouth and as his determined look turned to resignation.”) The sex scenes can feel overblown—“He entered her with force and thrust with the power of the booming ocean, pulling her hair across her back like the guiding mane of an unbridled horse.” But when the carnal thunder subsides, Brewer’s shrewdly observant prose ably conveys the ways relationships go sour through subtle details of bickering and body language (“Marina leaned across and hugged him to her hard, then kissed him long and passionately. His hands hovered just off her back and patted her softly now and then”). The character studies are sharply etched and realistic—so much so that they make painfully clear why all the players ought to abandon one another. Marina’s clingy oversolicitousness is suffocating; Lil’s volatility and peevishness are exhausting; and Rawley’s diffident refusal to commit—“I don’t know” is his mealy mouthed refrain—is infuriating. Readers may conclude that no amount of sorcery can or should keep any of them together.
An entertaining magical-realist tale of a marriage threatened by an infidelity.Pub Date: July 22, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-955955-45-4
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Goldtouch Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.
A vampire and an Alpha werewolf enter into a marriage of convenience in order to ease tensions between their species.
As the only daughter of a prominent Vampyre councilman, Misery Lark has grown accustomed to playing the role that’s demanded of her—and now, her father is ordering her to be part of yet another truce agreement. In an effort to maintain goodwill between the Vampyres and their longtime nemeses the Weres, Misery must wed their Alpha, Lowe Moreland. But it turns out that Misery has her own motivations for agreeing to this political marriage, including finding answers about what happened to her best friend, who went missing after setting up a meeting in Were territory. Isolated from her kind and surrounded on all sides by the enemy after the wedding, Misery refuses to let herself forget about her real mission. It doesn’t matter that Lowe is one of the most confounding and intense people she’s ever met, or that the connection building between them doesn’t feel like one born entirely of convenience. There’s also the possibility that Lowe may already have a Were mate of his own, but in spite of their biological differences, they may turn out to be the missing piece in each other’s lives. While this is Hazelwood’s first paranormal romance, and the book does lean on some hallmark tropes of the genre, the contemporary setting lends itself to the author’s trademark humor and makes the political plot more easily digestible. Misery and Lowe’s slow-burn romance is appealing enough that readers will readily devour every moment between them and hunger to return to them whenever the story diverts from their scenes together.
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780593550403
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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