A choppy but sweet paranormal romance about unexpected change, second chances, and true forgiveness.
In this novel, a young rock star loses a close friend to drugs and suffers so much guilt that he struggles to move forward romantically and professionally.
Jace Tanner seems to have it all: fame, fortune, and a great group of friends. It’s the early 2000s, and Jace’s band, Soft Division, is at the top of the charts. Despite everything they have going for them, the four band mates can’t seem to lay off drugs. When one of the members dies from an overdose, Jace blames himself. He is overwhelmed with sorrow, and his sister, Pearl, convinces him to enter a rehab facility in Minnesota. After many months searching his soul in rehab, he agrees to accompany Pearl on a 15-day tour of Europe as part of a fresh start. While traveling in France, Jace meets Yasmine Belmont and is instantly smitten. Despite their mutual attraction, the couple seem to have one miscommunication after another. Eventually, Jace convinces Yasmine to complete a portion of the European tour with him. Unfortunately, as the two grow closer, it seems their collective demons may prevent them from ever forming a successful relationship. Meanwhile, Pearl continues trying to convince Jace to resume his music career, but he feels too haunted by his past. Told alternately from Jace’s and Yasmine’s perspectives, the book is chock-full of intriguing information about the European cities they visit. Because Yasmine works as a tour guide, Patil is able to weave lengthy descriptions of historical sites into the dialogue. Although these lectures are initially additive, their increased frequency as the novel continues encumbers the narrative and begins to feel overly didactic. The introduction of supernatural themes about halfway through the story is also unduly abrupt, especially in light of the characters’ speedy willingness to accept the existence of paranormal occurrences. The use of language is sometimes clumsy, with mismatched tenses (“She comes up to hug me and then gives her mum a look I didn’t understand”) or redundant phrasing (“I hand her the drink in my hand”). Even so, the relationship between Yasmine and Jace is endearing, and the exploration of addiction and anxieties is sufficiently complex to engender thought-provoking questions.
A choppy but sweet paranormal romance about unexpected change, second chances, and true forgiveness.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 329
Publisher: Crystal Peake Publisher Ltd
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
