An intriguing tale that pushes the traditional boundaries of its setting.
The ascension of a new noble from the United States causes consternation among bigoted English aristocrats in Sterling’s debut historical novel set largely during the Regency era.
Readers meet the Roxburys and others of England’s wealthy class as the sixth Duke of Westmoure dies, the seventh duke is murdered, and the latter’s American son, Sterling Avery “Sar” Roxbury, becomes the eighth duke. Early in the story, readers learn that Sar’s mother, Anne, is the granddaughter of a Black person who was formerly enslaved. There are racist members of England’s aristocracy who will stop at nothing to keep a mixed-race person out of the nobility. During this time period, marriages between Black and White people are illegal in America, but they’re legal in England despite not being fully accepted by the so-called elite. As Sar and his family are escorted to London by the Crown’s top operatives, a plot to have the family assassinated is underway. The Roxburys begin to settle into their new life and learn about the power of British high society firsthand. Interwoven into the historical elements is a parallel plot portraying a romance between the duke’s sister Meredith and Crown operative Julien. Over the course of the novel, Sterling tells a detailed story of class prejudice in the early 1800s. Along the way, she also creates a steamy romance with detailed sexual interludes as Julien introduces Meredith to intimate relations. Sterling’s female characters are effectively portrayed as independent women and an integral part of society; aristocratic women, for example, are shown to secretly run businesses, and Sar’s mother and sisters are skilled in the use of guns and always carry them for protection. Overall, in a story set at a time of regressive societal expectations, the women of Sterling’s novel are shown to be more than matches for the men in their lives.
An intriguing tale that pushes the traditional boundaries of its setting.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2023
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Krystal Kate Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.
A lively and unabashedly sentimental novel examines the impact of feminism on four upper-middle-class white women in a suburb of Washington, D.C., in 1963.
Transplanted Ohioan Margaret Ryan—married to an accountant, raising three young children, and decidedly at loose ends—decides to recruit a few other housewives to form a book club. She’s thinking A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but a new friend, artistic Charlotte Gustafson, suggests Betty Friedan’s brand-new The Feminine Mystique. They’re joined by young Bitsy Cobb, who aspired to be a veterinarian but married one instead, and Vivian Buschetti, a former Army nurse now pregnant with her seventh child. The Bettys, as they christen themselves, decide to meet monthly to read feminist books, and with their encouragement of each other, their lives begin to change: Margaret starts writing a column for a women’s magazine; Viv goes back to work as a nurse; Charlotte and Bitsy face up to problems with demanding and philandering husbands and find new careers of their own. The story takes in real-life figures like the Washington Post’s Katharine Graham and touches on many of the tumultuous political events of 1963. Bostwick treats her characters with generosity and a heavy dose of wish-fulfillment, taking satisfying revenge on the wicked and solving longstanding problems with a few well-placed words, even showing empathy for the more well-meaning of the husbands. As historical fiction, the novel is hampered by its rosy optimism, but its take on the many micro- and macroaggressions experienced by women of the era is sound and eye-opening. Although Friedan might raise an eyebrow at the use her book’s been put to, readers will cheer for Bostwick’s spunky characters.
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781400344741
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper Muse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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