A solid, if limited, tale of forbidden love.
A Black woman born into slavery finds a way to survive.
This first installment of a historical fiction series introduces readers to Nady, an enslaved woman in North Carolina in the decades before the Civil War. Nady is an elderly woman as she narrates the story, which focuses on her youth and early adulthood. As a child, Nady displays a gift for singing, and her White enslaver, Matthew McCullen, has her professionally trained and offers her engagements throughout the region. When Matthew and his wife, Elizabeth, finally have a baby, Nady is assigned to sing Mattie his lullaby every night. Nearly two decades later, Mattie finishes his schooling and returns home, and Nady’s youthful affection for him quickly turns into passion. The two become lovers, and though they try to conceal their relationship, Elizabeth, who has long resented Nady, is determined to separate them. Elizabeth sends Mattie away and has Nady raped by an enslaved person and married off to another. Nady becomes pregnant and is determined to protect her child from Elizabeth’s punishments, particularly if Mattie turns out to be the father. As the country moves into war, Nady battles for her family’s survival while Mattie goes off to fight and ends up with an injury and amnesia that set the stage for the sequel. Hamilton is an evocative writer who brings her setting to life. At one point, Nady asserts: “You should always remember, every house has eyes, and those eyes come with lips attached.” Elizabeth is a well-developed villain, with plausible motivations that almost border on justification for her cruelty and a creative approach to tormenting her victims. Many of the supporting characters, particularly Nady’s mother, Clara, are also vibrant and authentic. The romance between Mattie and Nady, with its inherent inequality, is less thoroughly explored, although the author works hard to show the protagonist’s determination to make her own decisions despite the restrictions of her circumstances. The McCullens’ view of themselves as “good” owners of enslaved people could also be more deeply interrogated. The plot as a whole is well paced and organized, although the shift to Mattie’s story of war and memory loss at the end will leave readers with many unanswered questions rather than a sense of closure.
A solid, if limited, tale of forbidden love.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2022
ISBN: 9781662919558
Page Count: 418
Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A steamy, romantic summer read with a charming setting.
A florist attempts to avoid her best friend’s brother—and their powerful chemistry—on Prince Edward Island.
When Lucy Ashby visits her best friend Bridget’s family home on Prince Edward Island for the first time, Bridget gives her three rules: Eat your weight in oysters….Leave the city behind. And, most importantly, Don’t fall in love with my brother. Unfortunately for Lucy, she sleeps with Felix basically the second her plane lands, unaware that he’s Bridget’s brother until it’s too late. Lucy has never felt understood or accepted by her immediate family, and Bridget is one of the very few people she allows into her inner circle, so Lucy’s desperate to abide by these rules. And so she and Felix try to avoid each other on every one of Lucy’s visits to PEI over the years. And, of course, they fail spectacularly, always returning to each other when they’re in between relationships. But it’s never been anything serious…Lucy makes sure of that, backing off whenever her emotions feel too strong. In her “real life” back in Toronto, it’s easier for Lucy to avoid thinking of Felix as she runs a busy floral shop, working herself into the ground. But when Bridget asks Lucy to come to PEI for an emergency girls’ trip less than two weeks before Bridget is supposed to get married, Lucy drops everything to be there for her best friend. She doesn’t expect to find Felix there, along with feelings that are stronger and more difficult than ever to ignore. Even more than jeopardizing her relationship with Bridget, Lucy is afraid that giving in to her feelings could ruin the life she’s worked so hard to build. Fortune, the author of hits like Every Summer After (2022), gives readers another refreshingly summery story full of angst, romance, and sex scenes aplenty. The PEI setting is a beautiful backdrop for Lucy and Felix’s secret hookups and Lucy’s journey of self-discovery as she learns how to stand on her own two feet as a business owner, friend, and daughter. In addition to frequent (and welcome) Anne of Green Gables references, there are oysters galore and many sandy, windy scenes that transport readers straight to the island.
A steamy, romantic summer read with a charming setting.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9780593638880
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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