An enjoyable family tale with a tough and memorable hero.
This expansive and elegiac novel focuses on the life of a woman who searches for true love.
Bertelina Solis is a spirited and very beautiful girl, brave and committed enough to have taken a dangerously clandestine part in the Costa Rican revolution of 1948. Always hunting for the true love that her mother never found, Bertelina marries—after a crazy courtship—Oscar, the father of her children, who proves to be undependable and unfaithful. They divorce, and he never seems to have enough money for child support. Further adventures find her as an actor and model, but an attempted rape cheats her of a career in Mexican telenovelas. She and her children eventually move to Los Angeles, where she starts over yet again, as a hotel maid and grocery cashier. (This is where Bertelina becomes Bertha.) Somehow things come together over time, and she realizes that family is all-important. Alvarado has hit on a striking and poignant gambit. When readers first meet the older Bertha, her daughter, Maria, is reading to her from a manuscript. Bertha, who has dementia, is really engaged with it—it’s like a telenovela. What will happen to the hero? Readers will quickly realize that this manuscript is a biography of Bertha that Maria has lovingly written, something that the protagonist no longer has the capacity to recognize. What is emphasized is that Bertha is a classic survivor. She may not find that perfect love, but she is unstoppable. The writing is sometimes awkward (“When he lifted the cigarette onto his lips, the smoke became spiral as it rose”; “stalks of trees” instead of trunks of trees). But this family story is engrossing: Bertha’s kids become successful to varying degrees (middle class at last—the American dream) and can arrange care for her. This is the portrait of a life well lived, even if it is not the journey that Bertha would have planned, which is a reminder and a consolation for readers.
An enjoyable family tale with a tough and memorable hero.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2022
ISBN: 9781088054192
Page Count: 452
Publisher: Determined2 Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.
A vampire and an Alpha werewolf enter into a marriage of convenience in order to ease tensions between their species.
As the only daughter of a prominent Vampyre councilman, Misery Lark has grown accustomed to playing the role that’s demanded of her—and now, her father is ordering her to be part of yet another truce agreement. In an effort to maintain goodwill between the Vampyres and their longtime nemeses the Weres, Misery must wed their Alpha, Lowe Moreland. But it turns out that Misery has her own motivations for agreeing to this political marriage, including finding answers about what happened to her best friend, who went missing after setting up a meeting in Were territory. Isolated from her kind and surrounded on all sides by the enemy after the wedding, Misery refuses to let herself forget about her real mission. It doesn’t matter that Lowe is one of the most confounding and intense people she’s ever met, or that the connection building between them doesn’t feel like one born entirely of convenience. There’s also the possibility that Lowe may already have a Were mate of his own, but in spite of their biological differences, they may turn out to be the missing piece in each other’s lives. While this is Hazelwood’s first paranormal romance, and the book does lean on some hallmark tropes of the genre, the contemporary setting lends itself to the author’s trademark humor and makes the political plot more easily digestible. Misery and Lowe’s slow-burn romance is appealing enough that readers will readily devour every moment between them and hunger to return to them whenever the story diverts from their scenes together.
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780593550403
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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