A gracefully told story of the power of love.
In Baxter's historical novel, a lady, a lord, and his cousin have a chance encounter on a quiet country estate that changes their lives.
In the London countryside during the quiet Regency period, a fiery woman named Abigail Grantham visits her Uncle Longmore’s estate for a rare comet sighting. Her uncle, an accomplished astronomer, encourages his niece’s academic pursuits. After Abby arrives, she meets Lord William Rochvale, the other astronomer who will assist with charting the stars. Abby is struck by the Lord’s towering presence, and he by her beauty. As they get better acquainted, it becomes clear that they have much in common, and romantic tension begins to build. The burgeoning relationship is complicated, however, when the lord’s strikingly handsome cousin, Gerald Burnby, also becomes enamored with Abigail. The two men begin a rather polite war for her affections by accompanying her to historical sites, taking her on elaborate maze outings, and reciting poetry. Abby doesn’t know what to make of all the attention; she’s mainly focused on making an impact in the field of astronomy before she makes her debut in London society next year. Even so, Mr. Burnby’s charms draw her in, and Lord Rochvale’s steady countenance and humble intelligence gives her a feeling of security she never knew she needed. Their relationships become more complicated when speculation swirls about both men’s pasts and doubts arise about their intentions. Fans of Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series are sure to enjoy this courtly drama, which effectively illuminates the difficulty of finding a mate in a time of propriety. The novel moves quickly, and the author expertly develops the characters and their intertwining lives along the way. The penultimate conflict, however, is rather dull, and although the author employs red herrings to keep things lively, the plot’s resolution is a bit too predictable. Still, the skillful writing makes up for this, and brings the characters to life: “she recognized, as always, how insignificant the ways of men were in comparison to the vastness of the firmament, where stars sang together in such joyful chorus.”
A gracefully told story of the power of love.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9798866159451
Page Count: 258
Publisher: Dragonblade Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 romance that could have used significant rethinking.
Childhood friends, almost-sweethearts, a misunderstanding, and a funeral.
Blair Lang and Declan Renshaw were best friends who went on one date before a disagreement and an accident sent them in different directions after high school. Now Blair is back from college to be with her great-aunt Lottie, who’s dying, and to support her single mother in small-town Seabrook, California. Finding a job at a coffee shop puts her in the path of her former boyfriend, since he turns out to be its owner. Can the two get past their mistakes? The novel uses the popular second-chance romance trope, but Pham fails to energize it through interesting characters. Blair’s grief over her great-aunt’s death and her plan to help her mother are overshadowed by internal monologues about her feelings, the way her friends aren’t paying attention to her, and the novel she plans to write. Declan’s distinguishing characteristic, besides being a former high school quarterback, is his skill at building birdhouses. Unsurprisingly, the couple doesn’t have much chemistry; when they embrace, their “bodies meld like…memory foam.” The wooden characters, unusual word choices (“conglomerate of pedestrians,” “litany of plants”), and odd turns of phrase (“tension melting from his eyebrows like butter melting in a warm pan”) are almost enough to obscure the lack of plot development. What passes for stakes is easily defused when Blair comes into an inheritance that saves her from working as a consultant at Ernst & Young in New York—so she can write a romance novel.
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668095188
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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