An uneven love story with intriguing historical details.
A man contemplates his marriage, family, and life in this contemporary romance with philosophical themes.
Philosophy Ph.D. candidate Brendan Ryan fulfills his dream of a Thoreau-like existence in Maine when he escapes Boston and his unhappy wife for a cabin in Caribou, where he embarks on “his personal search for truth, his search for the meaning of existence.” He plans to spend the summer reading and rekindling a relationship with his son, Corey. The two are having a good time, but a conflict arises when Brendan is reunited with a French-accented beauty, Cosette Fontaine, at the local diner. They met when he passed through Maine while purchasing the cabin. Named after the tragic character in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables as a tribute to her Acadian heritage, the alluring waitress stands out in the small town. Brendan is immediately attracted to her open nature, so unlike his pinched and constantly complaining wife. He and Cosette engage in a light affair in spite of his marriage that quickly accelerates into love. Brendan is soon musing that “maybe my search for truth is over, my dear sweet angel—I may have found it right here with you.” But the unanswered questions involving his wife and marriage and whether he will return to Boston in the fall remain. At its heart, Carroll’s (Slum Fever, 2015, etc.) ambitious novel is more about Acadian history in Maine than a summer romance or philosophical journey. He delivers plenty of rich, vivid period details, including about the Ku Klux Klan’s role in the 1920s (“Prejudice against French-speaking Americans, especially Acadian French-speaking, began when the Klan came in”). But the story is populated by stock characters: the downtrodden husband, the fat harridan of a wife, the enchanting waitress, and the folksy, proverb-spouting handyman. Readers will struggle to identify with serial adulterer Brendan, who recalls his affairs with two sexy undergraduates. And Cosette seems bipolar, one minute playing coy, the next cursing about a rude waitress (“It’s really time for her to fucking croak!”).
An uneven love story with intriguing historical details.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 281
Publisher: Vanity Press Books
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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