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
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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