An addictive tale with drama, history, and delightful protagonists.
Jungle critters, diamond smugglers, murder, and three indomitable women propel this early-19th-century historical adventure.
It is 1809, one year after the entire Portuguese Royal Court escaped Napoleon’s army and relocated to Rio de Janeiro. The grand house of a viceroy has been turned into a temporary palace while Prince João, the heir apparent, builds his new royal home outside the city. Behind the palace is a convent that is home to the reigning monarch, Queen Maria I (the “Mad Queen”). Although the court’s arrival has brought new excitement to Rio, it has also resulted in unwelcome changes to the city that is home to Maria Azevedo, a free Black woman, and her younger, adopted sister, Isabel, an Indigenous Guarani. Maria is captain of a mule train that transports crates of gold from the mines in Minas Gerais to a bank in Rio. The team is waiting to register the gold at the Rio Customs office when two members of the Royal Guard harass the group (“They weren’t soldiers, and there was nothing royal about them”). Known as “Bats” because of their long, black, flapping coats, this violent, ad hoc police force was established to “civilize” the locals. The military intervenes, but the sisters’ trouble with the Bats has just begun. Later that evening, the sisters rescue a young woman under attack by a band of hoodlums, thus meeting Victoria Cruz, a Portuguese attendant to the queen. It is the beginning of a formidable friendship that adds extra intrigue to this high-octane escapade/thriller/murder mystery. Barineau’s Rio romp, packed with intriguing and occasionally disturbing historical tidbits, is lightened with a generous dose of humor. The racially and culturally diverse female protagonists are drawn vividly, with the portraits reflecting their unique personalities and abilities. Detail-oriented Maria is fiercely protective and a demon with her whip; spirited, impetuous Isabel, with her ever present assortment of knives secreted under her skirt, relishes a good fight; and the refined, initially timid Victoria turns out to be an expert with a sword. The author captures the sights, smells, sounds, and complicated social structure of Rio while maintaining a steady pace of well-scripted action scenes that, while over-the-top, are thoroughly enjoyable.
An addictive tale with drama, history, and delightful protagonists.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-949935-47-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Orange Blossom Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2022
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
This luxurious novel is set to take the world by storm.
The true story of Axis diplomats detained in the U.S. at the start of World War II is transformed into a dazzling historical novel set at a sumptuous West Virginia hotel.
Bestselling YA fantasy author Stiefvater’s adult debut introduces a writer whose prodigious imagination and distinctive prose style have combined to create a novel that will remind readers of why they fell in love with reading in the first place. At its center is the captivating June Hudson, an erstwhile Appalachian orphan who was taken in by the wealthy Gilfoyle family, owners of the Avallon Hotel & Spa, a high-society retreat built over underground mineral springs. At his death, the patriarch bequeathed ownership to his playboy son, Edgar, but made June the general manager, as she had spent her life learning the business—and also shared with Gilfoyle Sr. a rare gift relating to the “sweetwater” springs, a fantastical element of this otherwise realistic novel. Aside from the magical waters and a few other fanciful details, Stiefvater’s fictional world is based on extensive research into high-end hotels of the period, creating a version of luxury so appealing that readers will wish they could check into the Avallon and stay on indefinitely. In fact, the novel revolves around the true meaning of luxury. To June, it has nothing to do with wealth; it is more connected to joy, and to the book’s title: “June had long ago discovered that most people were bad listeners; they thought listening was synonymous with hearing. But the spoken was only half a conversation. True needs, wants, fears, and hopes hid not in the words that were said, but in the ones that weren’t, and all these formed the core of luxury.” Also brilliantly managed is the rest of the ensemble cast: sexy FBI agents; June’s inimitable staff; the delegations of Japanese, Germans, and Italians detained at the hotel, some quite nasty, but among them a strange, special, totally silent child. And on top of all this, a delicious love story!
This luxurious novel is set to take the world by storm.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780593655504
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
© 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.
