A heartbreaking and thought-provoking exploration of fate, love, and choice sure to bring on a few tears.
A woman finally meets the man of her dreams, literally, then must decide what to do about it.
Mia and her doctor husband, Harrison, have recently moved from Philadelphia to a small Pennsylvania town. Mia spends most of her time trying to convince local art galleries to show her work and grieving the loss of three very wanted pregnancies. Although their marriage is largely happy, Mia is keeping a secret from her husband and everyone else—for years, she’s been having dreams about a man she’s never met. She assumes he’s just a figment of her imagination, but then she sees him at the grocery store—and runs into him again when Harrison treats his sister for appendicitis. His name is Oliver, and he’s been dreaming of her, too. Meanwhile, Mia and Harrison’s relationship hits a significant roadblock—he decides he doesn’t want to try again for a baby. As Mia reels from Harrison’s decision, she and Oliver begin to research their unlikely dream connection. They have so much in common, and being with him is easier than being around her withdrawn husband. It’s clear that the two of them are connected in some way—but what does that mean? Should Mia be with Oliver or Harrison? Oakley (Close Enough To Touch, 2017, etc.) skillfully navigates several twists and turns, never settling for a predictable plot. The tension ratchets up quickly in the last third of the book as the characters hurtle toward the somewhat shocking event that finally reveals why Mia and Oliver are meant to be in each other’s lives. Readers expecting a simple happily-ever-after should look elsewhere, but those looking for a Me Before You–style sobfest are in the right place.
A heartbreaking and thought-provoking exploration of fate, love, and choice sure to bring on a few tears.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0646-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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