A forward-thinking innocent learns how to have it all in this absorbing love story.
A woman who’s ahead of her time struggles with her future in this historical romance novel by Baxter.
Georgiana “Georgie” Linfield, soon to turn 18, is quite distinctive from other English women her age, to her mother’s discontent. In this third volume of the author’s Linfield Ladies series, fledgling biologist Georgie’s dream is to travel abroad to satisfy her passion for natural history. But there's one significant barrier to this fantasy: Due to her older sister Harriet’s early marriage, Georgie’s coming-out season, during which she’ll be courted by eligible bachelors, gets moved up. She seeks the right type of husband: “The best thing she could do was find an indulgent husband who would not impose his will on her but rather give her the liberty to pursue her interests.” That description doesn’t fit Sir Giles Tavistock, the arrogant godson of her benefactor, Cousin Howard. Still, she agrees to illustrate Giles’s butterfly collection. As the two spend time together, their mutual attraction overwhelms her doubts—until Giles chooses to believe a nasty rumor circulating about Georgie. Georgie investigates another of her suitors, Pierre Alphonse, who is believed to be part of a conspiracy to free Napoleon from St. Helena. When Giles determines that the amateur sleuth is in peril, will he overcome his qualms and race to her rescue? The story is predictable: From the moment that Georgie and Giles meet at her father’s museum, it’s evident that the couple is going to end up together. The fun part is watching how that happens. Many of the obstacles that arise are the fault of the self-centered Georgie and Giles, who think the worst about others and aren’t terribly introspective. Georgie’s youth and naiveté further complicate matters. Still, it’s hard not to root for the spunky Georgie, who rails against the genteel norm for women in her era. The author effectively brings that time to life in her narrative with thorough research. The result is a work that’s both an engrossing love story and an involving period piece.
A forward-thinking innocent learns how to have it all in this absorbing love story.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9798985853087
Page Count: 226
Publisher: Vinspire Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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
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