Despite a few flaws, an engaging tale about a confused young man settling into adulthood.
A young man becomes desperate for female companionship and repeatedly sets his sights on the wrong women in this novel.
Peter Michael Webb is thrilled to be attending the elite Stepney Green College as a transfer student. Raised by a single mother of modest means, Pete struggles to fit in with all the rich kids at his new school and only finds a couple of friends. The story opens as Pete daydreams about his recent obsession, a female student named Brandi Sparks. After taking her on a couple of dates, Pete overhears Brandi mocking his impecuniousness, and then watches her fall into the arms of his friend Todd Galloway. Pete thus finishes school in the company of his only remaining cohort, Corinne Aldrich, who seems to have feelings for him that are more than friendly. Reluctant to ruin their friendship, Pete focuses instead on chasing his career goals and discovering love elsewhere. Following graduation, he moves back to his hometown to get a job and work on his novel. As he deals with his own dysfunctional family, Pete does achieve some professional success. His accomplishments bring with them increased opportunities for finding dates, but he begins to wonder what exactly he’s striving for and whether any of the women he pursued was ever right for him. While many of the women in Hamilton’s story are portrayed in a negative light, so are multiple male characters, who prove themselves to be unreliable backstabbers. But Pete is so earnest and naïve that readers will find themselves rooting for him. Told in the third person, the book shifts between the perspectives of Pete, his friends, and his family in a manner that leads to a sometimes choppy narrative. The novel also suffers from its use of old-fashioned language and actions. College students frequently employ outdated phrases and terminology, and cellphones barely appear (and even then, text messages are formal and lengthy). These anachronisms lead the work to read more like historical fiction from the 1960s or ’70s. Even so, the author manages to create intriguing characters with complicated interior worlds. While the ending is somewhat predictable, the journey to the story’s conclusion is ultimately satisfying.
Despite a few flaws, an engaging tale about a confused young man settling into adulthood.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-72835-091-2
Page Count: 344
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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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