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LOCAL GIRLS

Name: LOCAL GIRLS
Author: Caroline Zancan
ISBN: 978-1-59463-364-5

by Caroline Zancan ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 30, 2015

A character study that will draw you in—just don’t expect to have any energy left at the end.

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In Zancan’s debut, three Florida girls experience a life-changing night when they discover a movie star at their favorite local haunt.

The Shamrock doesn’t see much excitement. In fact, you can pretty much guarantee how a night there will unfold. Nestled in a nowhere town outside of Orlando, it’s the go-to place for Maggie, Nina, and Lindsey to test-drive their newfound adulthood. As narrator Maggie paints this picture, she notes that, on the surface, “we look happy.” But when A-list movie star Sam Decker arrives in search of a night of drinking away from the spotlight, this illusion of stability begins to unravel. Sam Decker looks happy, too—or should be, based on how he’s portrayed in the magazines the girls adore—but we know outright that this fated night is the last of his life. This revelation should allow for a healthy building of suspense, but the book never achieves the full crescendo the setup suggests. Instead, the story turns inward, focusing on how this encounter with Decker brings out each girl’s insecurities and the ways in which they diverge and connect. Decker takes the sparkle out of movie-star life, revealing himself as flawed and rather lost; if someone like him can feel so small, where does that leave the rest of them? Zancan describes Florida’s oppressive heat so well that it seems to affect the entire narrative; the girls' shared history is revealed in a slow, almost dreamlike fashion. As a narrator, Maggie is distant, weighed down by the responsibility of friendship and years of memories: “We cried about these things alone and together and wrote about them in the journals we had grown too old to call diaries.” There’s a stickiness to the prose that keeps it from achieving its intended impact.

A character study that will draw you in—just don’t expect to have any energy left at the end.

Pub Date: June 30, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-59463-364-5

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Riverhead

Review Posted Online: April 28, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.