by Alretha Thomas ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 7, 2024
A deeply satisfying suspense tale.
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The stories of two women separated by miles and years intertwine in Thomas’ riveting blend of family drama and thriller.
Single mother and journalist Leslie Graham has shaken off a disturbing past event and now leads a full life in California with her two teenage daughters, Rhonda and Jillian. Leslie is shortlisted to become the first Black news editor at the local paper in the charmingly named town of Dancing Hills. Suddenly, her world is thrown into turmoil when her daughters are involved in a car crash that is no accident: An SUV intentionally hits their vehicle, but why? In contrast to Leslie’s success and family life, 10 years earlier, New Yorker Barbara Morris, unhappily married to her husband Edward and aware he is planning to divorce her, develops a plan to keep their young daughter, Nancy, should the marriage dissolve: Barbara intends to hide their daughter and insinuate that Edward is to blame for her disappearance. It is a dark plan, concocted by a woman with significant psychological issues; Barbara fears she may suffer from schizoaffective disorder, likely inherited from a mother confined to a mental institution for killing her boyfriend (“The noise in my head, the voices. I couldn’t ignore them. The voices, those damn voices!”). Secrets abound throughout the book, and none of the women, young or old, is who she seems to be. Mother/daughter issues—good, bad, and very, very bad—knit together a narrative that brims with surprises. Characters who initially seem sympathetic turn otherwise, and vice versa. Leslie’s and Barbara’s stories are told in alternating chapters, with the two narratives converging in an explosive finale. Throughout, attention to small details helps make the characters feel more real, such as Leslie’s love of crocheting, Rhonda’s smile that reveals retainers, or Barbara’s approval of styling her dreadlocks in a French twist.
A deeply satisfying suspense tale.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9798218389680
Page Count: 327
Publisher: Diverse Arts Collective
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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New York Times Bestseller
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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by Sally Rooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 24, 2024
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
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New York Times Bestseller
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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