A sturdy, well-crafted, and vibrant fantasy.
An adventure in a strange land could prove deadly for two sisters in this thriller.
The life of Ashlyn Revere has stalled. Two months after graduating from college, Ashlyn is still searching for her break in publishing while living at home with her parents and three siblings. One of those is her sarcastic, fragile teen sister, Penny, who has battled cystic fibrosis her entire life. Their world changes forever when Penny stows away in Ashlyn’s car during a trip to a job interview and they are involved in a multicar accident. The sisters are left comatose and hospitalized. Ashlyn awakens in a fantasy realm called Summervale, which is ruled by the Dark Lord. She is befriended by a large black rabbit and later a Scarlet Knight. After being trained by the knight, Ashlyn sets off to rescue Penny. But Penny, who is healthy in Summervale, is content to play house with Mr. Darcy rather than return to the real world. Penny eventually wakes up in the real world but Ashlyn’s condition worsens. After one of the Dark Lord’s underlings reveals to Ashlyn her tenuous state, she opts to raise an army and attack the Dark Lord’s headquarters to gain her freedom. Edmonds (Snowflake’s Chance, 2018, etc.) performs a nifty trick, embedding a family drama in a dream tableau, allowing both Ashlyn and Penny to become heroes in their own stories. The two sisters love and resent each other. Ashlyn always felt responsible for her sickly sister while Penny envied her healthy, athletic sibling. Will love win out? The author effectively alternates between the medical drama in the real world and the fantastical happenings in the sisters’ dreamscapes, heightening the tension. What Edmonds does especially well is to sprinkle fantasy and pop-culture references throughout, making the volume accessible even to readers who aren’t genre fans. What results is a charming tale that allows every reader to smile knowingly.
A sturdy, well-crafted, and vibrant fantasy.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73404-640-3
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Scary Hippopotamus Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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