A tale about surmounting life’s most difficult moments and finding hope when one least expects it.
A young woman loses her daughter in a car accident and struggles to build a new life for herself in the aftermath of tragedy.
Mackenzie Cooper was driving her 5-year-old daughter to a play date when she missed a stop sign and collided with another car, killing both the other driver and her own daughter. A few years later, after Mackenzie has been divorced by her husband, dropped by her friends, disowned by her mother, and dragged through the mud by the press, she has finally created a quiet existence for herself. She lives in the sleepy town of Devon, Vermont, with two cats and a dog and works as a makeup artist at the spa in a local inn. She's changed her name to Maggie Reid, and almost no one in Devon knows about the accident or the probation officer who's been keeping tabs on her since that fateful day. Everything changes for Maggie the day her new friend Grace’s son is criminally charged with high-profile computer hacking, bringing the press swarming to Devon and dredging up many painful memories for Maggie. Worse yet, when Maggie accompanies Grace to meet with an attorney, they bump into Maggie’s ex-husband, Edward. Maggie learns that Edward has purchased the inn where she works, and he is moving to Devon. As Edward reaches out to Maggie with one overture after another, it quickly becomes apparent that the inn is not the only reason her ex was drawn to this particular town. Before she can reconcile with Edward, however, Maggie must find a way to accept the person she was before the accident and forgive herself for her past. Through a fast-paced and accessible narrative voice, Delinsky tackles many weighty issues in this complicated tale of friendship, loss, love, and redemption.
A tale about surmounting life’s most difficult moments and finding hope when one least expects it.Pub Date: June 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-11949-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
Jewell, a wry observer of human folly, delivers with this latest tale of loneliness and the lure of beautiful things.
Both witty and deeply moving, Jewell’s latest tale of a fractured family spans 30 years of Easter Sundays.
The Bird family lives a postcard-worthy life in the Cotswolds. Their garden cottage is filled with bric-a-brac and children’s drawings; father Colin is thoughtful; the two girls, Meg and Beth, and twin boys Rory and Rhys are clever, kind and muddy. And then there's mother Lorelei, the center of their bohemian universe, whose beauty and love of beautiful things hide darker obsessions that turn everything about their life into an unfathomable mess. The novel begins in 2011 as a grown Meg enters her childhood home. Lorelei has died of starvation, and Meg is down from London to sort things out. The house is impenetrable, filled with towers of newspapers, useless baubles and piles of ceaseless hoarding. It didn’t used to be that way—Meg remembers a bright childhood, in particular Easter Sundays in which an extended clan gathered for egg hunts and Lorelei’s brand of childlike magic. And then one Easter when Meg is 20, they find Rhys hanging from the rafters of his room. His suicide sinks everyone: Golden Rory runs off to a Spanish commune (and continues to run, until one day he ends up in a Thai prison); sensible Meg abandons her family for the new one she makes with Bill; Beth begins an illicit affair with Bill; and Lorelei forces Colin out so her new lover, Vicky, can move in. As Meg sorts through the rubbish, we are privy to Lorelei’s last correspondence to Jim, an Internet boyfriend to whom she confesses all her lonely secrets. Though Jewell's novels masquerade as breezy, they are unpredictable and emotionally complex.
Jewell, a wry observer of human folly, delivers with this latest tale of loneliness and the lure of beautiful things.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0299-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
Nevo is a funny, engaging writer, but his new book settles for cleverness without reaching for something more genuinely...
Three residents of an Israeli apartment building narrate their worries and woes.
Nevo (Neuland, 2014, etc.) is a bestselling Israeli author, and his most recent book to be translated into English makes it easy to understand why. His writing is compelling—actually, it’s compulsively readable, as the cliché goes. This novel takes place in a suburb outside Tel Aviv, an area one character labels “bourgeoisville.” It is split along three narrative lines, each corresponding to a character who lives on one of three floors in the same apartment building. On the first floor, there is Arnon, a father who grows obsessed by the idea that his young daughter may have been molested. On the second floor is Hani, a mother and a wife whose husband is always away on business. Devora, a retired judge, lives on the third floor; her husband has died, her son is estranged, and she must build a new life for herself. Nevo uses Devora to remind us, not so subtly, that these three characters match up rather neatly to Freud’s model of consciousness: Nevo has given us the id, the ego, and the superego, all in one novel. Fine; but though we’re drawn in by each of these characters and their various troubles and travails, in the end we’re left wanting. Sure, the stories are engaging (Arnon, Hani, and Devora each speak directly to a different “you”), but the book as a whole doesn’t satisfy. “Do you understand?” the characters say, again and again. “Can you understand?” Yes, of course, you’ll want to respond; but so what?
Nevo is a funny, engaging writer, but his new book settles for cleverness without reaching for something more genuinely moving.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-59051-878-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
© 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.
