An exciting read that shines a light on the secret layers that can exist between two people who think they know each other.
This riveting mystery unlocks the secrets of a husband and father’s supposed suicide.
Stone’s debut novel takes readers down South, where a broken family tries to make peace with their recent loss. Sally Mason and her troubled 13-year-old son, Colton, have been reeling since Sally’s husband, Jack, died. The coroner declares Jack’s death a suicide, creating a sharper, more personal pain. Sally becomes determined to find the truth behind her husband's mysterious death, hoping that a changed verdict will ease her son’s mind and put a stop to his acting out. She begins with Jack’s appointment book and is surprised to discover little secrets hidden there, such as several references to Sally’s father, whom she hasn’t spoken to in 15 years. Her curiosity piqued, Sally enlists the help of her father-in-law but is met with his fury and a fiery insistence that she leave things alone. Determined to see what secrets Jack kept hidden from her but seemed to share with others, Sally looks into the meetings Jack jotted down involving her father, centered, she suspects, on a covert business deal. Sally is reluctant to be back in contact with her estranged father, but soon the clues point to an underhanded scheme set up among him, Jack and Jack’s father and involving a property acquisition that should have belonged to Jack. As Sally unearths tales of staggering debts, familial betrayal and lies, she discovers what the cost of truth and how deeply her mother’s love runs. With candor, sensitivity and suspense, this novel weaves together elements of mystery and emotion. Sally’s quest and determination to help her son serve as the catalysts for a host of exciting events. Her dynamic character and the many people she encounters while piecing together her husband’s death—and life—prove to be memorable and well-sketched.
An exciting read that shines a light on the secret layers that can exist between two people who think they know each other.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-1938749025
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Violet Crown Publishers
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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