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
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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