The romance resolves predictably, yet the mystery leaves far too many loose threads.
Self-taught furniture restorer and successful business owner Teddi Overman has built a good life. Yet a mystery from her past lingers.
Raised in Kentucky, Teddi had an idyllic, if offbeat childhood. Her controlling mother, Franny, discounted her ability to transform junk into art, even after Teddi’s faux-finished bedside table earned her $100 and an invitation to visit an antiques dealer in Charleston. Franny instead bought Teddi a typewriter as a graduation gift and pushed her to go to secretarial school. Teddi’s father, silent and supportive, gave her a car and a map: her tickets to freedom. Josh—Teddi’s younger brother, a gifted naturalist and possible vigilante—gave her a horned owl’s feather and wished her luck. But then Teddi broke her mother’s heart, her father died, and Josh disappeared. Burying herself in her work, Teddi relies on her quirky collection of friends and foes. Mr. Palmer, the owner of the Charleston antiques store, gives Teddi her first chance and introduces her to Albert, a brilliant furniture repairer. Olivia, a rare books conservationist and Teddi’s best friend, meets her in the cemetery for emergency confidences over lunch. Tedra and Preston Calhoun help her negotiate the world of bank loans with distinct Southern charm. And then there’s Miz Tula Jane Poteet: a nice but forgetful little old lady or a kleptomaniac? Of course, her lawyer son eagerly pays for all of Tula Jane’s “purchases,” but he just as eagerly cuts short every conversation with Teddi. Just as love begins to nudge at the edges of Teddi’s life, she is forced to reckon with Josh’s disappearance and her mother’s dashed expectations. Hoffman’s (Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, 2010) sophomore novel confusingly mingles a charming Southern-girl romance with a weighty mystery.
The romance resolves predictably, yet the mystery leaves far too many loose threads.Pub Date: May 28, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-670-02583-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
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
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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