by Barbara Taylor Bradford ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 16, 2021
As a prologue to the Harte legend, very thin gruel indeed.
The eighth installment of Bradford’s Harte Family Saga is a prequel to the first, A Woman of Substance (1979).
Close followers of the Harte story will recognize Shane Patrick Desmond O’Neill, known as Blackie, as dynasty founder Emma Harte’s early mentor and helper, who earns her lifelong loyalty. In 1899, Blackie, an orphan, emigrates from Ireland to Yorkshire at the age of 13. Offered a home by his kindly Uncle Patrick and his ailing Aunt Eileen, who live near Leeds, Blackie learns the building trade; he has ambitions to be an architect one day but mostly to be filthy rich. Series fans know that Emma, who shares Blackie’s ambition to get filthy rich, gets her start in Leeds, but Blackie will not meet her until three-quarters of the way in. While we’re waiting, Blackie encounters that Bradford staple, the older woman who relieves him of his virginity and then conveniently exits. Until about Page 150, no real excitement or suspense happens beyond minute descriptions of logistics, interiors, and English cuisine—heavy on the meat pies. At 17, Blackie is enlisted by a friend to help rescue fellow immigrant Moira Aherne from the “Ham Shank,” a dangerous neighborhood. Blackie suspects, based on her upper-class accent and dress, that lovely Moira has an ulterior motive for slumming with the working class, but any hopes of Moira as a source of conflict are soon dashed. None of the privileged and beautiful people in this book harbor sinister motives because Bradford seems so intent on vindicating them. Case in point: Lord Robert Lassiter, an earl who takes up a sizable and at first seemingly unrelated chunk of the book. This handsome magnate who has parlayed his family fortune into another fortune proposes to the fetching Vanessa, 17 years his junior, while still married to Lady Lucinda Lassiter. Bradford implies that Lucinda, the mother of Robert’s heir and spare, deserves to be blackmailed into a divorce. The rushed denouement obscures some genuinely interesting logistics.
As a prologue to the Harte legend, very thin gruel indeed.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-2501-8745-1
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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by Leigh Bardugo ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 9, 2024
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.
In 16th-century Madrid, a crypto-Jew with a talent for casting spells tries to steer clear of the Inquisition.
Luzia Cotado, a scullion and an orphan, has secrets to keep: “It was a game she and her mother had played, saying one thing and thinking another, the bits and pieces of Hebrew handed down like chipped plates.” Also handed down are “refranes”—proverbs—in “not quite Spanish, just as Luzia was not quite Spanish.” When Luzia sings the refranes, they take on power. “Aboltar cazal, aboltar mazal” (“A change of scene, a change of fortune”) can mend a torn gown or turn burnt bread into a perfect loaf; “Quien no risica, no rosica” (“Whoever doesn’t laugh, doesn’t bloom”) can summon a riot of foliage in the depths of winter. The Inquisition hangs over the story like Chekhov’s famous gun on the wall. When Luzia’s employer catches her using magic, the ambitions of both mistress and servant catapult her into fame and danger. A new, even more ambitious patron instructs his supernatural servant, Guillén Santángel, to train Luzia for a magical contest. Santángel, not Luzia, is the familiar of the title; he has been tricked into trading his freedom and luck to his master’s family in exchange for something he no longer craves but can’t give up. The novel comes up against an issue common in fantasy fiction: Why don’t the characters just use their magic to solve all their problems? Bardugo has clearly given it some thought, but her solutions aren’t quite convincing, especially toward the end of the book. These small faults would be harder to forgive if she weren’t such a beautiful writer. Part fairy tale, part political thriller, part romance, the novel unfolds like a winter tree bursting into unnatural bloom in response to one of Luzia’s refranes, as she and Santángel learn about power, trust, betrayal, and love.
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781250884251
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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by Leigh Bardugo ; illustrated by Dani Pendergast
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