A moving, emotional, and unpredictable drama.
In Meade’s debut novel, a young man struggles to keep his relationship with his girlfriend afloat while uncovering his own family’s secrets.
When 23-year-old David first meets Hope, he’s immediately taken by her easy charm and beauty, thinking she’s an “effervescent fairy” and a “harbinger of light and good will.” However, he increasingly finds her inscrutable and sees cracks in the persona that she presents, which creates emotional distance between them. She was clearly badly burned in a fire, but he doubts her account of how it happened. One night, during a sexual encounter, he refuses to grant her unsettling request that he strike her in the face. Meade, through David’s perspective, poignantly captures the awkward, unspoken discomfort between them immediately afterward: “I didn’t understand then what you needed to be able to feel. That you needed me to cut through the layers you covered yourself with. I just didn’t know how to do it.” Still, David perseveres, intent on not becoming “just another person on the list of people who have let her down.” He inherits a “rotting cabin” in the woods of New Hampshire from his recently deceased paternal grandfather, Theo, who lived a secluded life as a hermit and always remained something of a mystery. As David continues to recount his faltering relationship with his girlfriend and tries to decipher a series of clues in the cabin that point to well-guarded family secrets, he becomes increasingly aware of a presence in the woods. The entire story is conveyed from David’s first-person perspective, framed as a communication to Hope. Over the course of the novel, Meade artfully explores the cumbersome weight of personal secrets and the emotional consequences of concealing a source of profound shame. It’s revealed, for instance, that David has his own cross to bear—he hit an elderly man with his car and fled the scene of the accident—and Meade vividly depicts the manner in which he tries to free himself of his guilt.
A moving, emotional, and unpredictable drama.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63152-691-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A romance for readers looking for equal parts passion and family drama.
A violinist tries to ignore the attraction she feels toward her sister’s ex-husband.
Years earlier, India Robidoux suppressed her feelings of attraction toward her sister Elaina’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Travis Strickland. India and Travis shared an incendiary kiss on the night of her 22nd birthday while he and Elaina were on a break. India hoped it would be her chance with Travis, but she was devastated when Travis instead proposed to her sister two weeks later. Unable to cope with her feelings, India fled and spent the next six years in Europe playing violin with an international orchestra. India finally returns home to Jackson Falls, North Carolina, intending only a brief stopover before an audition with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, but she’s immediately pulled into the family orbit to support her brother’s Senate campaign. The romance between India and Travis is on the back burner as Williams (His Pick for Passion, 2019, etc.) introduces the Robidoux family and many substantive but soapy subplots, most of which center on the machinations of India’s father, Grant. As the CEO of Robidoux Tobacco, Grant has meddled in his children’s lives to shore up the respectability of the family and the company. India loves her father but is determined not to let him decide her fate. As she and Travis reconnect, they find it impossible to ignore their simmering attraction. Travis is less hesitant about his feelings for India, not willing to make the mistake of letting her go again. Even though the romance gets off to a slow start, this is a pleasingly angst-y novel about forbidden lovers finding each other.
A romance for readers looking for equal parts passion and family drama.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-335-01324-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harlequin HQN
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Moyes has mastered the art of likable, not terribly memorable, but far from simple-minded storytelling.
Popular British author Moyes (The Girl You Left Behind, 2013, etc.) offers another warmhearted, off-kilter romance, this one between a financially strapped single mother and a geeky tech millionaire.
Ten years ago, Jess Thomas got pregnant and dropped out of high school to marry Marty. Two years ago, hapless Marty temporarily moved out of their home on the southern coast of England to sort out his life. He never returned. Cleaning houses by day and working in a pub at night, Jess barely earns enough to support her 10-year-old daughter, Tanzie, and her 16-year-old stepson, Nicky, whom she’s been raising since he was 8. Jess worries constantly about sensitive Nicky, a moody goth regularly beaten up by the local bully. Math genius Tanzie presents a different crisis: She’s been offered a generous scholarship to a private school her current teachers say she needs, and Jess can’t come up with the balance. The only hope is winning prize money at a math tournament in Scotland, but how to get there? Meanwhile, one of Jess’ cleaning clients, computer whiz Ed Nicholls, has come to stay in his seaside vacation home to avoid publicity surrounding insider trading charges. He and Jess share an instant mutual dislike, but when he ends up drunk at the pub, Jess makes sure he gets home safely. Partly out of gratitude, but largely to escape pressure from lawyers, his ex-wife and his sister—who’s nagging him to attend his father’s birthday party—Ed offers to drive Jess, her kids and their large dog to Scotland. A road-trip-from-hell romantic comedy ensues, complete with carsickness, bad meals and missed signals. Unsurprisingly, hostility evolves into mutual attraction. But Moyes throws in a few wrenches, like Tanzie’s failure at the competition, Ed’s father’s cancer and the cash Jess has secretly kept since it fell out of Ed’s pocket at the pub that first night.
Moyes has mastered the art of likable, not terribly memorable, but far from simple-minded storytelling.Pub Date: July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-525-42658-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
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