Publisher's Weekly Review
For the first time in her career, Oates is identified on the cover of this seventh novel of psychological suspense as the name behind the nom de plume. Her dark protagonist also has a double life. The exotic beauty Starr Bright seduces hooligans and gamblers, only to murder them brutally when they succumb. Starr, a.k.a. Rose of Sharon Donner, is the daughter of a fundamentalist preacher and fraternal twin to Lily of the Valley, whom she hasn't seen for 15 years. The two are opposites; while siren Starr prowls the Vegas strip and carves up men for kicks, genteel Lily Merrick teaches pottery classes and tends her family in Western New York. When Sharon wheedles her way back into Lily's storybook life, "Starr" is making tabloid headlines as a serial killer on the lam. Lily, ignorant of her sister's double identity, is alarmed by how sick and vulnerable her long-lost twin appears and so agrees to take her in. Sharon's real reason for returning to her hometown soon reveals itself: she's out to avenge the now-grown high school boys who gang-raped her when she was 15. Nobody walks on the dark side with a more menacing gait than Oates/Smith (Lives of the Twins), but the stock theme of good twin/bad twin has perhaps been taken for one too many strolls. Creepy biblical cant and schizophrenic episodes run like shivers through her prose, but somehow do not save the plot from being just a bit ho-hum. Agent, John Hawkins Literary Agency. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A cozy suburbanite who's won it all loses it, and perhaps his mind as well, when a summons to jury duty throws him together with a bewitching assault victim, in the sixth and most elaborate of Smith's neo-gothic fantasies (You Can't Catch Me, 1995, etc.). Who could be more comfortable, more utterly natural in his setting, than Terence Green, the foundation director who commutes home each day to his wealthy, glamorous wife and two daughters (a son is at Dartmouth) in comfy Queenston, New Jersey? But all that changes when he's asked to judge the case of Ava-Rose Renfrew, who's accused one T.W. Binder of assaulting her. Suddenly infatuated with Ava-Rose, Terence finds himself rising to persuade his wavering fellow-jurors to convict Binder, then hanging around Ava-Rose's neighborhood and getting sucked into her raffish entourage. Soon he's swapping stories with her aunt Holly Mae Loomis and her Cap'n-Uncle Riff, flirting with her twin nieces Dara and Dana, and, inevitably, bedding sweet Ava-Rose herself. And soon he's paying for his enchantment not only with the foundation's money, pinched with unwonted dexterity, but with his peace of mind--his double life has stirred obscure memories of the early life his upscale marriage rescued him from--and perhaps his freedom as well, as he slips into murder with the same horrible facility and self-excusing glibness that marked his descent into romantic obsession. (There's even a murder he's not sure he's committed, a disconcerting complement to the general weightlessness of his other misdeeds.) Meantime, he's getting broad hints, in Smith's most overwrought style, that Ava-Rose is not what she seems; in fact, she may be nothing but an optical illusion. It's a mark of both Smith's unsettling power and its limitations that Terence's wayward obsession is so much stronger and more believable than the shadowy woman who inspires it, or even than Terence himself.
Booklist Review
Smith is the pseudonym Joyce Carol Oates uses for her psychological suspense novels, a genre that, given her propensity for abhorrent behavior, she takes to with smashing results. In her latest one, Terence Greene is a very successful executive, husband, and father. One day, he is called to jury duty, an experience in which he has never participated. What an experience it turns out to be--or, more specifically, what an experience he allows it to become. Ava-Rose Renfrew is the alleged victim in the case, and Terence's interest in her goes well beyond that of dutiful juror. In fact, he becomes infatuated with her, and his obsession leaves not only infidelity but also murder in its wake. Terence's normal upper-middle-class life is left in the dust as he skates on the thin ice of unleashed emotions and out-of-control actions. Ironically, his descent into the psychotic maelstrom amounts to a greatly enticing read for all Oates/Smith fans. --Brad Hooper
Library Journal Review
Terence C. Greene is envied and admired as the husband of the wealthy, attractive Phyllis and as the executive director of an arts-supporting foundation. Competent at work, Greene never quite overcomes his feelings of inadequacy elsewhere. A jury duty summons and subsequent selection as foreman allow him to guide the decision in an assault case against a man accused of beating Ava-Rose Renfrew. From his first view of colorful, free-spirited Ava-Rose, Greene is lost. His obsession compels him to embezzle funds, steal vehicles and other items, and murder for Ava-Rose and her "family" of unclear relationships and even murkier livelihoods. Although Greene tries to return to his former way of life, he is incapable of staying away from Ava-Rose's milieuwhere at novel's end he believes he is happy and in control. The extended sentences, half-stated thoughts, and omniscient yet focused narration underscores Greene's dislocation. For most fiction collections, especially where Smith's (a.k.a. Joyce Carol Oates) psychological suspense titles are in demand.V. Louise Saylor, Eastern Washington Univ. Lib., Cheney (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.