A pleasant enough diversion that takes itself more seriously than it probably should.
A feisty aristocrat seeks out her destiny at the end of the world.
In her debut novel, Hannah indulges a fascination with lighthouses and historical fiction to craft an imaginative fantasy that veers precariously between tasteful romance and bodice-ripper. “Someone once told me that every tower had a ghost, and every ghost had a story,” begins narrator Sara Stevenson, the fictionalized daughter of the famous Scottish lighthouse engineer Robert Stevenson. Newly pregnant, the scandalized girl has been exiled to Cape Wrath, the most northwesterly point in Great Britain, in the year 1814. Furious with her family, she mourns the loss of her suitor, Thomas Crichton, a sailor who mysteriously vanished on the day of their planned elopement. Her reluctant protector in this uneasy locale is the secretive light-keep William Campbell, a gentle but brusque man who Sara seems to be forever accusing of ill intentions, even as he keeps a secret of his own. The collision of these two characters is highly entertaining, but Hannah muddies the fish-out-of-water story with an incongruous mystery. Sara is intrigued when she receives in the post an unusual timepiece, delivered by an Oxford scholar who promised to return it to another woman, Sara Crichton, at the wish of her dying husband. This wrinkle makes all the time-traveling in Diana Gabaldon’s series seem absolutely straightforward by comparison, although Hannah manages to keep the mystery afloat right up until the story’s end. Along the way, though, the author often makes too obvious an attempt to formalize her language while indulging in lots of hand-wringing about love torn asunder. Yet readers may find themselves won over by Stevenson’s fundamental conflict. “Two different men from totally different worlds there could not be,” she says, “and, God help me, but my heart was overwhelmed with a want of both of them.”
A pleasant enough diversion that takes itself more seriously than it probably should.Pub Date: July 27, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-345-52054-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
