by Amanda Brooke ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 12, 2013
The innovative, quirky plot and author’s old-fashioned overwrought style will appeal to some readers, but others will find...
Brooke’s novel, set in the countryside near London, captures the heartbreaking dilemma of a woman who must choose between saving her own life and that of her unborn child.
Holly is an artist who spent her childhood longing to get away from her parents—a drunken, abusive mother and a distant, uninvolved father. Once both are dead and she is on her own, she meets the man of her dreams, Tom, a television journalist from a close-knit family. When they purchase the gatehouse of a large, burned-down estate, Tom tries to talk Holly into starting a family. She isn’t sure about becoming a mother, especially when her own was so terrible, but slowly starts to consider his proposition when she has an otherworldly encounter with what turns out to be an ancient “moondial” in the couple’s garden. In this encounter, Holly sees the daughter she will have and learns she will also die delivering her. After meeting and befriending Jocelyn, who once lived with her own family in the same house, Holly discovers that the older woman has had a similar experience with the mysterious stone. Confiding in Jocelyn, Holly discovers her dilemma is even worse. Holly knows she must find a way around the moonstone’s death sentence or she will never live to see her precious baby. Although the plot shows promise and creativity, and Brooke delivers a solid yet fanciful storyline, the overall execution is clumsy. The book is riddled with clichés: Holly, Tom, Jocelyn and the rest of the book’s characters never simply say anything; in Brooke’s world, they gurgle, they beam, they gush, they whisper, they sob and they wink, while wading through buckets of adverbs and torrents of sugary dialogue.
The innovative, quirky plot and author’s old-fashioned overwrought style will appeal to some readers, but others will find the syrupy prose overwhelming and wish the book had been subjected to a more strenuous edit.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-213183-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
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by Colleen Hoover ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 17, 2018
Finding positivity in negative pregnancy-test results, this depiction of a marriage in crisis is nearly perfect.
Named for an imperfectly worded fortune cookie, Hoover's (It Ends with Us, 2016, etc.) latest compares a woman’s relationship with her husband before and after she finds out she’s infertile.
Quinn meets her future husband, Graham, in front of her soon-to-be-ex-fiance’s apartment, where Graham is about to confront him for having an affair with his girlfriend. A few years later, they are happily married but struggling to conceive. The “then and now” format—with alternating chapters moving back and forth in time—allows a hopeful romance to blossom within a dark but relatable dilemma. Back then, Quinn’s bad breakup leads her to the love of her life. In the now, she’s exhausted a laundry list of fertility options, from IVF treatments to adoption, and the silver lining is harder to find. Quinn’s bad relationship with her wealthy mother also prevents her from asking for more money to throw at the problem. But just when Quinn’s narrative starts to sound like she’s writing a long Facebook rant about her struggles, she reveals the larger issue: Ever since she and Graham have been trying to have a baby, intimacy has become a chore, and she doesn’t know how to tell him. Instead, she hopes the contents of a mystery box she’s kept since their wedding day will help her decide their fate. With a few well-timed silences, Hoover turns the fairly common problem of infertility into the more universal problem of poor communication. Graham and Quinn may or may not become parents, but if they don’t talk about their feelings, they won’t remain a couple, either.
Finding positivity in negative pregnancy-test results, this depiction of a marriage in crisis is nearly perfect.Pub Date: July 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7159-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
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by Rebecca Serle ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2020
A heartwarming portrait of a broken heart finding a little healing magic.
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After acing a job interview and accepting a marriage proposal, Dannie Kohan has had the perfect day. That is, until she awakens to find herself five years in the future with a completely different man.
Just one hour in that alternate reality shakes Dannie to her core. After all, highly ambitious Dannie and her boyfriend, David, have plotted out their lives in minute detail, and the sexy man in her dream—was it a dream?—is most certainly not in the script. Serle (The Dinner List, 2018) deftly spins these magical threads into Dannie’s perfectly structured life, leaving not only Dannie, but also the reader wondering whether Dannie time traveled or hallucinated. Her best friend, Bella, would delight in the story given that she thinks Dannie is much too straight-laced, and some spicy dreaming might push Dannie to find someone more passionate than David. Unfortunately, glamorous Bella is in Europe with her latest lover. Ever pragmatic, Dannie consults her therapist, who almost concurs that it was likely a dream, and throws herself into her work. Pleased to have landed the job at a prestigious law firm, Dannie easily loses her worries in litigation. Soon four and a half years have passed with no wedding date set, and Bella is back in the U.S. with a new man in her life. A man who turns out to be literally the man of Dannie’s dream. The sheer fact of Aaron Gregory’s existence forces Dannie to reevaluate her trust in the laws of physics as well as her decision to marry David, a decision that seems less believable with each passing day. And as the architecture of Dannie’s overplanned life disintegrates, Serle twists and twines the remnants of her dream into a surprising future.
A heartwarming portrait of a broken heart finding a little healing magic.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3744-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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