February 1, 2024
In a debut that blends mystery, astronomy, and romance, young widow Sylvia searches for her husband's killer as a rare comet becomes visible. A mystic claims that the comet is a divine message, and her town descends into a fervor over the comet in this literary thriller that considers the lengths people go to in pursuit of an obsession. Prepub Alert.
Copyright 2023 Library Journal
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from April 8, 2024
A young widow, a mysterious astronomer, and a doomsday cult collide as the arrival of a once-in-a-lifetime comet transforms tiny Jericho, New South Wales, into a global hot spot in Todd’s intoxicating debut. As grieving and guilt-stricken narrator Sylvia Knight approaches the second anniversary of the car crash that killed her husband, Christopher, and left Sylvia seriously injured, the only thing keeping her afloat is finding the hit-and-run driver who shattered their lives. But a seemingly chance encounter with Theo St. John, the charismatic American discoverer of the impending comet, at the funeral home where she works, surprises Sylvia by stirring her interest in him—and perhaps even her attraction. She has little bandwidth, however, to dwell on those feelings between planning the grand funeral mystic Joseph Evans wants for his late mother and doggedly pursuing her hit-and-run investigation with the help of Christopher’s cop friend. When Sylvia and her mother-in-law, Sandy, attend a meditation group Joseph runs, she discovers that Danny Ward, the only witness to the crash, is among Joseph’s inner circle. Sensing a lead, Sylvia encourages Sandy to continue joining her at the frequent, increasingly intense sessions, despite strong warnings to the contrary from Theo. As Sandy is sucked into Joseph’s orbit and her own feelings for Theo grow, Todd skillfully ratchets up the suspense on the way toward a stunning climax. The result is a lyrical and inventive literary mystery from an author whom readers will hope returns far sooner than any visiting comet. Agent: Janet Silver, Aevitas Creative Management.
March 26, 2024
Sylvia Knight works at a funeral home—the same one that buried her husband after an unsolved hit-and-run. Two years on, she has given herself ‘permission to finally leave this planet’ and decides she will take her own life on the anniversary of his death. Coincidentally, this is also the date that the St John comet will be visible to the naked eye, with its epicentre above Sylvia's small NSW town. A chance encounter with the comet’s namesake, the astronomer Theo St John, causes Sylvia to deviate from her path at the same time as she is drawn into the orbit of mystical guru Joseph. The comet’s approach casts a strange spell over the town, heightening existing tensions and bringing long-held secrets into the light—‘the comet seemed to be revealing us all to ourselves and each other, in our various registers of fear, hope, and hubris’. Sylvia’s narration is rather baroque, which could have detracted from the 1990s setting, but instead it serves to ratchet up the atmosphere, one oppressive detail at a time. Todd’s representation of the bereft widow is incredibly moving as Sylvia journeys from being ensnared in rage and obsessed with finding the truth to becoming more at peace with her discomfort. Bright Objects is a meditation on grief, trust, belief and justice that brings to mind Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries and Jacqueline Bublitz’s Before You Knew My Name.
May 16, 2024
Todd's debut is at once a soaring epic and a grounded tale, weaving together the consequences of the celestial with the mundane aspects of grief. Sylvia Knight is a one-time librarian, now a funeral director and a widow, having lost her husband Christopher in a devastating car accident. Driven by grief, she contemplates ending it all on the same night a rare, incredibly bright comet makes its way to Earth. But driven by the comet itself and the two men involved in its appearance, she decides to find out who was driving the car that hit hers and then drove away on the night her husband died. With graceful, elegant prose that walks the line between ethereal and painfully human, Todd allows the reader to grapple with the same concepts as Sylvia: What drives grief and our responses to it? What lies beyond this universe, and do we humans deserve to understand it? And how do we justify our choices in the face of concepts much bigger than we could ever be?
COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
July 1, 2024
A small town in Australia is the setting for a lushly detailed debut novel starring a comet that puts Halley's to shame. Among the watchers of Comet St. John in 1997 is Sylvia Knight, a 32-year-old funeral home worker who two years earlier was the victim of a hit-and-run crash that killed her husband. Since then, she's been doggedly but unsuccessfully searching for the driver of the car that caused the crash. The comet--which is due to make its first appearance to the naked eye in January, a few days after the novel starts, and to grow more prominent in the sky through August--has a special meaning for Sylvia: "The date St John would show itself in the sky was...the date by which I'd given myself permission to finally leave this planet." Life, however, interferes with this plan, as Sylvia becomes unexpectedly intrigued with a mysterious stranger who shows up at the funeral parlor and turns out to be Theo St. John, the pensive young American astronomer who first discovered the comet. Then Sylvia feels compelled to rescue her gullible mother-in-law, Sandy, from the local doomsday cult that's sprung up around the comet and is planning a festival with an ending that doesn't bode well for local residents. While the mystery of who was driving the car that killed Sylvia's husband falls flat, with a conclusion that many readers will anticipate, Sylvia is a compellingly contradictory narrator, drawn to both stability and risk, and Todd places her in an equally complex community, a small town thrown off balance by its placement at the epicenter of comet viewing. The novel's noir edge combines with a tone of mystical fatalism to make for a disorienting reading experience. A heady look at the influence of the heavens on a small patch of earth.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.