A taut and involving small-town tale of murder and loyalty from a promising new author.
A teenager finds her beliefs about her problematic uncle severely challenged.
In Willms’ debut novel, a young woman opens the narration by telling readers about a simpler time in her childhood, “when I still believed in happy endings and dared to dream.” Felicia Francine Harrison—a tomboy who took immediately to the nickname Freddy, much to her mother’s dismay—lives the fairly normal life of a small-town kid, with her siblings Angie and Harry, her laid-back father, and her graceful, demanding mother. “I strove to be the over-achiever that mom always wanted,” Freddy relates, “but whenever I tried it inevitably resulted in an even worse embarrassment to my mother than ever before.” These relationships endure an added strain when the family takes in Freddy’s Uncle Joey, a developmentally handicapped young man with whom she forms a close bond. Joey is a sweet, simple-minded soul whose gentle, friendly nature impresses Freddy from an early age (“Every creature Joey touches, he touches with loving tenderness,” she tells readers). As the two grow up, Freddy loses her virginity to her high school boyfriend Erik and begins to envision a future with him, but just as those dreams come crashing down around her, further tragedy strikes. Joey is implicated in the death of a neighborhood girl with whom he’d displayed an innocent obsession. The girl’s father had warned him about coming anywhere near her, and when she turns up dead in the greenhouse owned by Freddy’s father, Joey automatically becomes the prime suspect. A scandal and an investigation promptly unfold, and the author handles the steadily increasing complexity of the plot with a far more practiced hand than might be expected in a first novel. The suspicions about Joey unnerve Freddy and she vainly tries to convince the police of his innocence (“Joey isn’t very smart, I’ll admit, but he would never hurt anybody”). The main characters and supporting cast are drawn with economy and a clear sense of the evolving relationships, including between Freddy and her parents. Freddy’s mother starts to worry about her daughter’s future: “I’m afraid with her always feeling responsible for Joey, there won’t be room in her life for anything or anybody else.” Willms orchestrates the mounting tension of the book’s final act with smooth assurance.
A taut and involving small-town tale of murder and loyalty from a promising new author.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9910645-1-9
Page Count: 578
Publisher: Eirene Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
