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
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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