Entertainment
Jessica Knoll’s new sexy thriller proves why she is the queen of dark beach reads
Bestselling author Jessica Knoll’s protagonists mostly follow a specific pattern: They are women who have learned Not. To. Flinch.
On the Shelf
Helpless
By Jessica Knoll
Scribner: 320 pages, $28
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And, apparently, neither does Knoll. Talking over Zoom about her fourth novel, the erotic thriller “Helpless,” which is out this month, the author is blunt about the challenges it took to complete the book. “It takes a lot of skill to write good sex,” Knoll says. “I relied a lot on feedback from my editor and from my book agents saying ‘this is hot; this is not.’”
Knoll has written romantic scenes before, but “Helpless” needed to be enthralling and economic enough not to get her kicked off of Target’s bookshelves. In the end, the author says, “I went by what felt good and natural for these characters and maybe a little bit of the really unfiltered talk you have with your girlfriends after a couple martinis or are on a girls trip.”
Knoll’s successful career as a novelist rests on her knack for creating provocative page-turners that depict the absolute worst things one person could do to another — but in such a sensational, tongue-prickling-sour-candy kind of way that her books come off as devilishly evil beach reads. Since her debut bestseller, 2015’s “Luckiest Girl Alive,” — a master class in braided narration between a Machiavellian magazine editor and her younger self who endured so much emotional and physical trauma that it’s no wonder she grew up to be extremely calculating — to 2018’s reality TV-set “The Favorite Sister” and 2023’s “Bright Young Women,” a response to the public’s obsession with immortalizing serial killers while also not knowing the name of a single one of their victims. Knoll’s books are not only stories about women who do not care if you like them but also ones where disastrous results await the women who do follow our cultural conditioning to be agreeable to men.
Her “Helpless” heroine is not so different from a lot of her previous main characters: Type A overachievers with cutting inner monologues that let the reader know they’re always one step ahead in the social Darwinism that is female relationships. This time, she’s named Faye Heron, an Emmy-winning Hollywood multi-hyph who found cachet while working on one of those edgy premium dramedies that probably aired on HBO. Faye, and her husband/producing partner, have parlayed this notoriety into indie, cool-kid projects that are just commercial enough that some of the target audiences’ boomer parents may also watch.
When Faye’s beloved college professor dies suddenly and she’s asked to speak at a memorial ceremony, nostalgia and flattery make her drop everything and hightail it back to the leafy northeastern college town. The place is a time capsule with sketchy internet service, drunken frat boys, and — most crucially — Faye’s college boyfriend Henry, who is now married with two kids and still lives in the area. The clothing references and song choices are popcorn for those old enough to remember the aughts but young enough to party during them. The Elsa Peretti-designed Tiffany & Co. heart necklace that was the it-girl accessory of the time, and now is one that Gen Zers are fishing out of the bottoms of their parents’ jewelry boxes, factors significantly into the plot.
Although the story eventually spirals into other tropes of the Knoll-niverse — kidnappings, cover-ups, affairs, the laissez-faire security that only old money affords — Faye stands out because she wants to be told what to do. In a secure and mutually consenting relationship, of course. And preferably after she’s told her partner what she wants.
“Helpless” was influenced by the 1995 Susanna Moore thriller “In the Cut” as well as Sarah J. Maas’ currently uber-popular romantasy series “A Court of Thorns and Roses,” both of which discuss power imbalances and smart women who become enamored with dangerous lovers.
Knoll has always been open about creating work that’s commercial. She famously wrote a 2018 New York Times opinion piece, titled “I Want to Be Rich and I’m Not Sorry,” that discussed her need to rank in money with an almost Scrooge McDuck fervor: “Success, for me, is synonymous with making money,” she writes. “I want to write books, but I really want to sell books. I want advances that make my husband gasp and fat royalty checks twice a year. I want movie studios to pay me for option rights and I want the screenwriting comp to boot.”
(Evelyn Freja / For The Times)
During our Zoom, with the background carefully faded behind her wavy blond bob, she promises that she doesn’t just copy and paste her subjects and settings from what sells.
“I’m just always looking on what the spin is; like, what the timely take is on something that happens to capture my attention,” she continues, citing a habit she credits to her early career working in women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan and Self. She adds that “I just happen to be interested in, like, really dark s—.”
“Helpless,” Knoll stresses, is a work of fiction; even though fans may be looking to draw comparisons to her life since “Luckiest Girl” was heavily influenced by her own career and childhood. Like the book’s Faye, Knoll went to a private liberal arts college. She’s spent time in the Adirondacks with the wealthy families who vacation in bare-basics cabins on the land they own. And she has dealt with her share of studio executives. Unlike Faye, Knoll is happily married to her husband, financial technology executive Greg Cortese. They share a young daughter. Last year, the family moved back to New York after some time in Los Angeles.
She does relate to Faye’s wealth dynamics. Her “Helpless” heroine grew up middle class but now has reached the “made it” level of nervous cockiness that happens when you combine new money and fame; the dream of so many who move to L.A. Henry, Faye’s ex, and his family are so comfortable in their generational wealth that he was raised to wear the same, now-bleach-stained, chambray button-down he had in college than buy a new one because clothes aren’t sound investments.
Knoll says she doesn’t want “things to feel didactic,” but concedes that class divides offer a treasure trove of stories.
“I just find myself going back to, again and again, this idea of someone who is the outsider because they don’t have the pedigree of their peers, but however many years later they’ve accomplished something and they think that they’re on more equal footing with these people from their past,” Knoll says. “Then something happens that brings them back into this environment where maybe they felt less-than years ago. They think that they’re going to go back and be like, ‘well, I’ll show you now because I’ve made it’ and those feelings of inferiority are still there.”
As she’s grown older and her career has become more stable, Knoll says she doesn’t think about success and fame the same way she did when she wrote her viral opinion piece or gave interviews where she talked about money and her own financial security. She says now that her priority is “the longevity of the career.”
Like her heroines, no one tells Knoll what to do. Unless she gives the OK.
Friedlander is a pop culture and entertainment journalist based in Los Angeles who hates coffee but loves Coke Zero.
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Entertainment
ZZ Top scrubbed Bowl concert because of Frank Beard health issues, but tour will continue
The show will go on for ZZ Top.
Last week, the blues rock band canceled its Hollywood Bowl concert because longtime drummer Frank Beard had health issues, Rolling Stone first reported.
That Aug. 5 Los Angeles concert was supposed to be the kickoff for the band’s the Big One tour. But a spokesperson for the band says that frontman Billy Gibbons and bassist Elwood Francis will continue the tour.
Michael Monahan will substitute for Beard for the remainder of the Big One, which will conclude its U.S. run on Oct. 9 in Port Wentworth, Ga.
The band has not said that it will reschedule the L.A. show, and all tickets, including transportation and parking passes, were being automatically refunded, according to the Hollywood Bowl.
Gibbons previously posted on Instagram that there were unexplained “insurmountable obstacles” leading to the band’s sudden cancellation at the Hollywood Bowl.
The band has released no details on Beard’s condition, although this is not the first time the drummer, 77, has faced health-related issues in his long tenure with the band. Beard joined ZZ Top in 1969, soon after the band formed, replacing founding drummer Dan Mitchell.
In March 2025, the Texan trio announced via its Instagram that Beard would temporarily step away from the band’s Elevation tour to tend to a health issue, which was later revealed to be foot and ankle problems. John Douglas — a longtime tech member, percussionist and drummer — replaced Beard in the interim, having done so previously when the veteran drummer underwent an emergency appendectomy in 2002.
In ZZ Top’s early days — following the release of the 1976 album “Tejas” — Beard dealt with issues related to substance abuse that led to the band’s three-year hiatus, which he and his bandmates opened up about in the 2019 documentary “ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band From Texas.”
“Frank goes all out on what he does and that includes the bad things,” bandmate Dusty Hill, who died in 2021, said in the documentary. “He was sick. If you’re a very good friend, you love a guy, you don’t want to see him die. You just want to see your brother get well.”
The Grammy-nominated band, which formed in Houston, is known for its edgy blues twang in popular singles including “La Grange” and “Tush” and across 15 studio albums. In November, ZZ Top will close out the Big One tour with eight performances across Mexico and South America.
The Rivals of Amziah King. 2026
Written and Directed by Andrew Patterson
Starring Matthew McConaughey, Angelina LookingGlass, Kurt Russell, Cole Sprouse, Owen Teague, Scott Shepherd, Tony Revolori, Rob Morgan, Jake Horowitz, Catherine Dyer, Sandra Ellis Lafferty, Harrison Stone, Jason Davis, Bruce Davis, Sharon Blackwood, and Chip Carriere.
SYNOPSIS:
Amziah King, beekeeper, musician, and anchor of his community, reunites with former foster daughter Kateri after many years apart, and fends off threats to his honey business.
After putting on a show with his bluegrass band (the songs throughout are mesmerizing, deserving of awards consideration) while waiting outdoors for a fast food establishment to fulfill an order, it is revealed that Amziah King, the motormouth, sympathetic, and endearing center of this Oklahoman community (played by Matthew McConaughey, so effective in the role it’s hard to imagine anyone else in it) in writer/director Andrew Patterson’s sophomore feature The Rivals of Amziah King, is also a beekeeper with a local honey business, only to then shift into a mystery where detectives attempt to use his knowledgeand expertise to pinpoint who might have stolen barrels of honey elsewhere.
All of this is before he is reunited with his foster daughter Kateri (Angelina LookingGlass, not only outstanding in her debut, but essentially carrying the film across its second half) for another chance at instilling some of those same lessons of communal kindness through music, potlucks, and some familiar but still worthwhile metaphors comparing the hierarchy of bees to human relation dynamics.
Slightly backing up, during that inspection of the honey inside a factory with Amziah’s musician crew, there is a near-fatal accident that is played for laughs and only funny because the individual comes away alive. It’s at this point that this critic was somewhat confounded by what tone the filmmaker would be going for (Andrew Patterson’s sensational low-budget, grounded sci-fi debut, The Vast of Night, was certainly fairly straightforward in that department), which is not to say that the film itself ever feels confused.
If anything, it’s another assured and confident piece of filmmaking, this time diving into a rural subculture with sharp specificity, the kind that makes one wonder if Andrew Patterson has experience in this world. The conversations revolving around beekeeping, the musical instruments used (one character scoffs at another for confusing a ukulele for a mandolin), the skill in bringing out the beauty of the locales, and the descriptions Amziah gives to the idiosyncratic locals are simultaneously esoteric and endearing. It’s a slice of life that Matthew McConaughey knows how to sell as vibrant, quirky, authentic, and united.
Following tragedy and estrangement, Amziah is naturally elated that Kateri is back in town, taking her under his wing to learn beekeeping while also nudging her to sing with the band (which includes notable actors such as Owen Teague and Tony Revolori) and play music. He invites her to a potluck, ascribes a story behind every dish in relation to one of the oddball locals (and there are some truly offbeat characters here, some of whom are in his inner circle), and, as mentioned, instills a sense of community and forgiveness (some of the men he works with are formerly incarcerated,
Andrew Patterson manages to keep the film bracingly original, quietly moving, and visually sumptuous (shots of our protagonists harmoniously covered in bees, as if they are becoming one together, carry a moving beauty) with a score from Erick Alexander and Jared Bulmer that is similarly unparalleled and unique, blending together an assortment of instruments not often heard in movies (at least not recently), lending the story and characters a boost of stirring soulfulness.
There is a freewheeling looseness to the first half, mostly concerned with Amziah joyfully sharing this way of life with Kateri, while serving as another showcase of Matthew McConaughey capably charming an entire room and audience (it is a much-needed refresher seeing him out of tacky commercials and back into an A-lister sweet Southern hospitality screen presence. A standout scene incorporating a dose of broad comedy comes when they inspect a beehive at an elementary school where several children have already been stung, working together with his RV-living friend and co-worker (Scott Shepherd), whom no one understands, as everything that comes out of his mouth is garbled and indecipherable, to handle the mess and get the students to safety.
Without giving anything away, the second half shifts into an entirely different type of film, one that brings into focus the titular rivals of Amziah King, chief among them played by Kurt Russell in a villainous role with a couple of additional layers that, admittedly, might come too late to really resonate into something substantial. This sets up an unorthodox heist out in the wild, utilizing bridges and rivers, as Kateri befriends Remmick (Jake Horowitz, collaborating once again with the filmmaker), another trusted member of Amziah’s fold, as they work together to get to the bottom of the mystery mentioned up top. It is also here that the film finds some of its darker, crime-thriller edges, with Kateri prepared and willing to go to great lengths to seek revenge and restore what belongs to Amziah.
Although much of this works on the strength of the characterization alone, one occasionally sees Andrew Patterson embrace convenience and the unexpected to push The Rivals of Amziah King in different directions. There is a narrative passing of the torch with Kateri taking center stage, something that Angelina LookingGlass fully impresses in doing so, finding and expressing new layers to the character, even if the storytelling within those crime aspects might not be as tight or compelling as the jovial first half that revels in highlighting this agricultural subculture. Nevertheless, the performances throughout and the score are more than a worthy rival to those small shortcomings, as the emphasis on community, music, and beekeeping metaphors comes through narratively, visually, and sonically.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder
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