A high school sports tale with a familiar arc and a richly rendered milieu.
In this debut novel, a young football coach puts the hopes of a West Virginia town on his shoulders.
Alderson, West Virginia, 1936. The Depression has brought its share of pain to the small, rural town, but the single greatest cause of suffering may be the fact that the local high school football team hasn’t won a game in two years. Last season, the team didn’t even score a single touchdown. Narrator Billy Shelton puts it this way: “I read an article once in a National Geographic magazine which said that every culture in the world has initiation rituals to define the moment when a boy becomes a man.…In West Virginia culture, the rite of passage which separated the men from the boys was football.” Fifteen-year-old Billy, a milk delivery boy with an ailing father, just wants a shot to prove himself on the gridiron. That shot may have just arrived in the form of the new football coach, 27-year-old Alexander Arbuckle McLaughlin. Coach, as everyone calls him, recently built a successful program elsewhere, and Billy and his teammates have hopes he can bring that magic to Alderson. But can one man really inspire a down-on-its-luck town to get back on its feet? Smith’s prose captures the language and texture of the setting. Here, Billy describes foraging for a local delicacy: “Picking Chinquapins is a tricky business, though. That’s why they aren’t grown commercially. First, you have to find them before the squirrels and birds get them. Second, the nuts are covered by a prickly bur. Getting a nut out of an unopen bur is difficult. You have to put it on the ground and roll it under your shoe.” The author includes wonderful period details, like the Farm Women’s Club setting up looms in the school’s gymnasium in order to weave rugs and blankets there during the summer. These slice-of-life moments are the book’s strongest asset, helping to sharpen what is otherwise a fairly standard and predictable sports story. Readers with ties to West Virginia may be the most suitable audience for this novel flecked with vivid local color.
A high school sports tale with a familiar arc and a richly rendered milieu.Pub Date: March 8, 2022
ISBN: 979-8429169200
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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