An engaging Victorian romance that may appeal to fans of Jane Eyre.
A young woman’s attraction to a dashing doctor is fraught with complications that threaten her marriage prospects in this historical novel.
Seventeen-year-old Lizzy Doddridge and her 20-year-old sister, Emily, are bright and full of life. Both are anxious to find suitable husbands before society considers them to be spinsters. One day, while riding in the park with Emily, Lizzy is thrown from her horse, face-first, into a hedgerow. Thanks to the quick action of Edward North, a prominent London physician, she’s rushed to a hospital. After the accident, the sisters’ uncle, Henry Doddridge, suggests that they return with him to Neatham Park, the family’s ancestral home, to help their pregnant cousin, Lavenia, whose unscrupulous husband is squandering their money. Lizzy is surprised to discover that Edward recently purchased a neighboring estate, and the two become friends, drawn together by their love of animals. She falls in love with the compassionate doctor; however, he’s engaged to heiress Beatrice Bingham. Despite Lizzy’s family’s concern that her love for Edward will end in heartbreak, she remains loyal and resigned to spending life as a spinster. But when she discovers Beatrice’s dangerous secret life, she races against time to protect the man she loves. Kennedy’s (Bobbin’s Journal, 2017, etc.) latest is a poignant Victorian-era romance featuring an appealing heroine, vivid supporting characters, and a fast-paced narrative. Lizzy effectively anchors the story and drives much of the action. Over the course of the novel, she matures from a girl swooning over literature and dreaming of marriage to a perceptive, resourceful young woman who refuses to settle for anyone less than her ideal husband. She’s complemented by Edward, whose feelings for Lizzy come up against difficult circumstances. Their attraction unfolds slowly in scenes marked by tenderness and gentle wit. A subplot involving Emily’s relationship with a veterinary surgeon is well-developed and provides an intriguing parallel to Lizzy’s situation with Edward.
An engaging Victorian romance that may appeal to fans of Jane Eyre.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-945494-12-3
Page Count: 147
Publisher: Kennedy Literary
Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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