The Elements by John Boyne

Published by Henry Holt and Co. on September 9, 2025

The Elements is a collection of powerful moments, all related to the central themes of child sexual abuse and healing. While several characters commit or are victimized by sexual abuse, their stories are neither conventional nor filled with melodramatic weepiness. In one case, the abuser is a woman who victimizes fourteen-year-old boys. In another, an abuse victim grows up to be an abuser. These are not happy stories, but they illuminate facets of abuse that are often neglected in fiction.

True to its title, The Elements is divided into four parts: Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. A celebrated swimming coach in Water, Brendan Carvin, has been sexually abusing children on his team. His wife, Vanessa, was aware that his parents “had instilled a fear of sexuality in him from an early age, convincing him that he should be ashamed of his natural desires.” One of the Carvins’ two daughters commits suicide by drowning herself for reasons that the reader will quickly suspect. Whether Vanessa was aware (or should have been aware) of her husband’s misconduct is left for the reader to decide.

Mortified by her husband’s misconduct and ashamed that she failed to protect her family, Vanessa has changed her name and moved to a small island off the coast of Galway. Vanessa no longer listens to her favorite talk show on the radio. “Brendan and I were the subject of debate on many occasions and, masochist that I am, I couldn’t stop myself from obsessively listening as strangers called in to denounce us both.” She has endured scrutiny that is “corrosive to the soul.”

Vanessa claims she traveled to the island to learn the truth about herself. Vanessa likes “the idea of walking along the cliffs like an actress in a television advertisement, staring out to sea and contemplating the ruins of my existence.” Her younger daughter, Rebecca, habitually blocks and unblocks her mother on her cellphone. Whether Vanessa deserves a reader’s sympathy is a question each reader will need to decide.

The most dramatic moment in Water occurs when Brendan, having served his time, appears on the island, having apparently learned nothing. Vanessa asks him whether he will ever stop “asking the world to excuse you, because you still feel like a teenage boy and, somehow, you can’t help yourself.” The ability or inability to take responsibility for one’s actions is a continuing theme.

Also living on the island are Charlie Keogh and his son Evan. Charlie wants Evan to try out for a professional soccer team, but Charlie — despite his undeniable talent for the sport — doesn’t enjoy it. He’d rather be an artist. He has a dramatic moment of his own when he takes a small boat alone into the ocean. His motivation isn’t fully explained until later in the story.

The second part, Earth, focuses on Evan who, as a young adult, is working his way up the ranks of professional soccer. Before deciding to earn a living by playing a sport he doesn’t enjoy, Evan earned money by being pimped out to wealthy men. Evan is accused of being an accessory to (by recording on his phone) the rape of a young woman committed by a teammate. Some of his story is told through trial testimony.

Fire begins a couple years after the story in Earth ends, although it completes the story that Earth tells. The protagonist is Freya Petrus, a surgeon who specializes in burn injuries. Freya sat on Evan’s jury. Freya seduces a frightened boy, much against his will. Freya’s motivation for her latest act in a pattern of sexual misconduct with young male teens traces to her victimization by young teenage males when she was twelve.

Air is a family drama and the most redemptive of the four parts. Years after the events in Water, Rebecca is now married to Aaron Umber, whose own history of abuse is described earlier in the novel. They are in love, but their marriage is sexless apart from rare instances, one of which leads to the birth of Emmet. Aaron is now divorced from Rebecca, perhaps because of a female novelist who knew them both. Aaron feels abandoned by Rebecca. Most of Air follows Aaron’s attempts to stay connected to his son as they travel back to the island where the events on Water unfold. They are making the trip to attend a funeral.

The point of Air is that it is never too late for our emotional wounds to heal, provided we have the courage to begin the process. Air ends with a message of hope, the hope that damaged parents can raise an undamaged child, a child who — once old enough to understand — learns from his parents’ damage. The message infuses the novel with elements of a happy ending, at least for a few characters. As the female novelist explains, “In the end, the reader just wants everyone to survive and be happy.”

The Elements raises important questions. Are bad people born that way or is their behavior a product of their upbringing? The book offers no easy answers because there are none. Freya was damaged by her childhood, but she inflicts more than her share of damage before she’s in her mid-30s. Aaron had a traumatic experience but turned into a man who wants nothing more than to be a loving father. Why were their life outcomes different?

John Boyne is careful to give characters who do evil things some sort of consequence. This is presumably an attempt to give readers what they want — at least the opportunity to imagine a happy ending, even if he doesn’t write one for each character — despite the novel’s overall recognition that people who do evil things often live consequence-free lives. Sometimes they’re even rewarded for their bad conduct.

Some of the story is deeply disturbing. Sensitive readers might want to avoid The Elements. Yet the story’s disturbing nature is vital to its success. Each central character, good or evil or a mix of both, is struggling to make a life. At least one finds redemption. At least one rejects the concept. The complexity of life and the struggle to shape it give the novel its weight. The Elements can be an emotionally difficult read, but its refusal to turn away from ugliness ranks it among the most meaningful books I’ve read this year.

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Apostle's Cove by William Kent Krueger

Published by Atria Books on September 2, 2025

Apostle’s Cove tells two stories, separated in time by a quarter century. The story begins in the present, when Cork O’Connor’s son tells him that a man he sent to prison might be innocent. The novel quickly moves back to a time when Cork was a sheriff to explain why Axel Boshey was convicted of murder, even though Cork doubted that his confession was true.

A girl named Chastity was the daughter of a woman named Aphrodite. Chastity wasn’t particularly chaste, but she didn’t have nearly as many sex partners as her mother. Chastity married a Native American named Greensky but had at least one other lover, raising questions about the paternity of the child born to their marriage.

When Greensky died in an alleged hunting accident, his friend Axel was widely viewed as his killer, despite an investigation that cleared him. Chastity married Axel soon after Greensky’s death and Axel adopted her son. They had a child of their own, whose biological father was also uncertain. They were no longer having sex by the time Chastity’s body was found with multiple wounds made by a fireplace poker.

The novel’s first part follows Cork as he tries to solve Chastity’s murder. A fair amount of evidence points to Axel. He had argued with Chastity that night. He was wildly drunk. She was pregnant with another man’s child. Axel wanted to divorce her, but she threatened to keep the kids from him if he did. He claims to have no memory of killing her, but his clothing, covered with her blood, is found in a nearby shed.

Many members of the community are convinced of Axel’s guilt, including Rocky Martinelli, a deputy sheriff who hates Indians. Cork is less certain, but the matter is taken out of his hands when Axel decides to confess.

In the present, Axel has been in prison for a quarter century and has no great desire to leave. He has started a counseling program to turn around the lives of Native American prisoners. When Cork’s son, an intern at an Innocence Project, finds evidence that Axel might be innocent, Cork sets about reinvestigating the case. That task brings him back to Aphrodite and her collection of lovers, to the town librarian (who may have had a motive to kill Chastity), to a woman who claims to have been purified by an angel who restored her virginity, and to other potential suspects.

Series fans will be familiar with Henry Meloux, a Native American healer who gathers knowledge by listening to the woods. Henry plays a role by suggesting a new path that Axel might follow if he is released from prison, contributing to the novel’s theme of redemption. Fans might also be pleased that Cork’s daughter, a novelist named Jenny, joins the hunt, and that Jenny’s son Waaboo, who senses evil spirits, plays a small but significant role. While I’m not a fan of evil spirits (or good ones, for that matter), the supernatural has little to do with the novel’s outcome.

The characters in Apostle’s Cove have family issues that add interest to the story. The solution to the mystery involves incest, quite a bit of adultery, and a variety of vices. A reader might need a spreadsheet to keep track of suspects and the relationships of characters to other characters, but William Kent Krueger includes enough internal summaries to keep the plot from becoming too confusing to follow.

Cork is a decent person who struggles with his failure to pursue the truth more aggressively twenty-five years earlier. That struggle is simply evidence of his decency. The story repeatedly acknowledges the brutal victimization that Native Americans have suffered at the hands of white haters but avoids a preachy tone. The focus is on the mystery and the steps that Cork takes to solve it. Perhaps readers who are more astute than I will be able to see past the misdirection and solve the puzzle. I was overwhelmed with data and stopped trying at some point, but the story is no less entertaining for being so detailed.

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Happy Labor Day!

What About the Bodies by Ken Jaworowski

Published by Atlantic Crime on September 2, 2025

What About the Bodies is built on dark humor and strong characters. Two characters are kids. Reed is autistic and Billy speaks with a stutter. Reed’s mother just died (a death for which Reed is blamed) and he’s lobbying to stay with his brother Greg, who wants to put him in a home for disabled adults. Billy’s mother, Carla, is trying to open a midscale restaurant in a barn she purchased, but she’s running out of money. Billy distracts her from that problem when he confesses that a body is buried in their back yard.

Liz is a singer-songwriter who has a chance to impress a music producer in Nashville if she can find a way to get there. She has no money and, when she gets her car repaired on credit, the mechanic’s carelessness causes her car to erupt in a ball of flame. When the mechanic insists on being paid anyway, her not-really-friend Luke decides to make a quick profit selling drugs but makes the mistake of transporting them in a truck that has been reported stolen. Since Liz is driving the truck, her odds of meeting the producer, like her car, seem to have gone up in flames.

The characters deal with one mishap after another as they work toward their goals. Subplots unfold as the characters pursue their adventures. Reed wants to place a doll in his mother’s casket (he made it for her in grade school and she told him she wanted to be buried with it) but the casket has already been sealed. Reed is forced to detour from his trip to the cemetery when his high school nemesis, now a small-town cop named Dan, tries to bully a Black family.

Carla and Billy decide to move the buried body but get into a scrap with a biker gang while the rotting corpse is stinking up the trunk of Carla’s car. To get money, Liz and Luke decide to steal something that Liz owns by breaking into her father’s house, which is now controlled by her stepmother. That criminal escapade, like all their money-raising plans before it, goes sideways.

The various adventures merge and diverge in amusing ways as characters drift together and apart. When it seems that things could not go worse for a character, they do. Perseverance is a theme that runs through the story. Never give up: even if you stutter, even if you throw fits when things to wrong, even if you have more debt than money and no clear way to achieve a goal. You can’t get there by quitting.

Carla and Liz use their wits to solve their problems, while Billy and Reed are surprisingly resourceful. All the key characters are drawn with realism, encouraging the reader to invest in their lives. They’re fundamentally kind people who occasionally make mistakes, as do we all. In one of my favorite scenes, Reed recalls how a young woman in high school danced with him, an act of kindness he has never forgotten. Ken Jaworowski seems to be illustrating the truth that a simple act of kindness can stay with another person forever. It might even change a life.

If reading promotes thinking that might make us better people, What About the Bodies? could be a life-changing novel for some readers. At the very least, it tells a fun story about decent people who overcome obstacles as they tenaciously pursue their own versions of a successful life without sacrificing their humanity.

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I Become Her by Joe Hart

Published by Thomas & Mercer on August 26, 2025

Victimized woman flees from abusive husband/boyfriend/ex before proving her toughness by saving herself from his clutches is a popular thriller subgenre. The stories tend to be formulaic. I Become Her twists the formula by adding a second victimized women and creating some uncertainty about the character of the abuser. The ending is predictable and the characters are unappealing, but fans of the subgenre will probably enjoy it.

Imogen Carmichael is on a honeymoon cruise when she becomes irrationally jealous of Lev, her new husband, because he touched the hand of a waitress. When she wakes up and her husband isn’t in their cabin, she thinks he’s gone ashore. She searches the bars, then spies a couple canoodling on the beach. The man is the same size and shape as her husband, but she can’t be sure if it’s him.

Back on the ship, Lev returns to their room and claims to have been in the ship’s casino, although Imogen didn’t see him there. They have a spat. Imogen shoves Lev. He hits his head and tumbles off the balcony and into the ocean. After a moment of hesitation, Imogen calls the ship’s emergency number, all but certain that Lev has died.

Lev is improbably saved by a fisherman but doesn’t remember the shove. He recalls Imogen as being his fiancé, not his wife. The last six months of his memory are gone. Lucky for Imogen, right? Not so much, since she will now live in fear that Lev will recover his memory and conclude that she tried to kill him. Which, to be fair, is the logical conclusion to draw. In any event, the story is just getting started.

A rational person might take her husband’s near-death experience as a wakeup call, a warning about the consequences of excessive jealousy. Not Imogen. After she and Lev are safely home (in a house Lev doesn’t remember), Imogen searches for the name of the waitress (Lyra Markos) and begins to obsess about her yet again. After every man in a restaurant (including her husband) notices the entrance of a beautiful woman, Imogen has a nightmare about stabbing her (although in her dream, the bloody victim morphs into Lyra).

My thought at this point was that Lev didn’t know what he was getting into when he married Imogen and didn't deserve her paranoid suspicions — unless, of course, Lev really did sneak off to shag Lyra on his honeymoon. That would be naughty indeed, but still not an excuse for murder.

As these events unfold, Imogen makes occasional references to a man with whom she once shared an apartment. She clearly feels some guilt about an incident involving the man and a knife, but she doesn’t explain what happened until the novel’s midway point. None of this is likely to endear a reader to Imogen.

Imogen narrates most of the chapters, but some (including the first) are narrated by Sierra. Sierra’s short chapters reveal her fear of being discovered. She swims across a lake every day to build her strength, in case she one day needs to swim away from a predator. The novel is at its midpoint before we learn Sierra’s connection to the rest of the story. Only at the end do we learn the full truth about Sierra.

Also at the novel’s midpoint, Imogen manages to contact Lyra in Greece in the apparent belief that Lyra would confirm shagging her husband if that actually happened. Lyra’s function in the rest of the novel is to go missing, joining Sierra as a missing woman who is somehow tied to Imogen and Lev.

Joe Hart conceals the novel’s key surprise until the final chapters. Since I only figured it out when Hart planted the final clue, I rate the surprise as a success. Less successful is Hart’s attempt to make Imogen sympathetic. He can only accomplish that by making her nemesis a monster. That’s common in the subgenre, but my sympathy was dampened by Imogen’s disagreeable personality.

The ending is exciting despite its predictable nature. Ambiguity surrounding Lev’s character gives the reader something to chew upon for part of the novel, but once clarity emerges, the plot loses most of its interest. Subgenre fans will likely rate the novel a winner, but my recommendation is tepid.

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