A clever and often caustic sendup of modern motherhood.
An overwhelmed mother seeks help from an equally overwhelmed therapist in Ferner’s debut novel.
Motherhood is driving April Stewart crazy. Between her 8-year-old, Elliot, and her toddler, Violet, April feels that she has no space for herself in her own life—she can’t even find time to go to the bathroom. The stay-at-home mom gets little help from her husband, Aaron, a packaging designer for a specialty grocery store: “Something I couldn’t shake, but never knew how to accurately verbalize to Aaron, was my quiet resentment about his daily life having changed very little since we had the kids, whereas mine was now unrecognizable. Parenthood had exacted something from me that it hadn’t exacted from him—not even close.” When she finally can’t take it anymore, she decides to consult a therapist. June is a “flawless blonde” whose put-togetherness at first exacerbates all of April’s anxieties, but the two soon hit it off. At June’s encouragement, April even gets back into designing clothes and finding a boutique to carry them. As June becomes further entwined in her life, however, April notices cracks beneath the surface. When June asks April to come with her to Las Vegas to spy on her cheating husband, April realizes that the “Mom Code”—the “law of helpfulness that moms follow when one of our sisters is in distress”—may be too powerful to overcome. As narrator, April tackles motherhood with unflinching (and often profane) humor: “The flock of women looked up from the table of bags, aghast. They didn’t know that this wasn’t my first time being slapped in the face, in public, by a toddler.” The great specificity with which Ferner writes about child-rearing—and the real but complex resentment she reveals in April’s marriage—helps set this book apart in the field of comic women’s fiction. The plot is a little meandering, and the reader eventually becomes as frustrated with Elliot and Violet as April already is, but the characters are so well constructed and April’s voice is so compelling that the novel has no difficulty pulling the reader through its pages. Ferner will likely have many fans awaiting her next irreverent volume.
A clever and often caustic sendup of modern motherhood.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63152-842-2
Page Count: 280
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© 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.
