There’s also plenty of narrative room for the promised sequel for those who can’t wait to find out what happens to Mary...
Slow-paced, emotionally charged romance; the first in a planned series by best-selling genre novelist Macomber (1225 Christmas Tree Lane, 2011, etc.).
Rose Harbor is sort of like Cabot Cove: beautiful, a touch staid, full of folk who look and act the part of locals. The difference is, there’s no mayhem of the sort that would give Angela Lansbury reason to get up in the morning in Rose Harbor, which lies about due west from Cabot Cove and on the opposite coast. There, Jo Marie Rose has just moved to open a B&B. She had found romance late in life (well, in her late 30s, anyway) only to suffer the death of her husband in far-off Afghanistan, the victim of a chopper crash high in the mountains. That’s a nice modern touch in a story that could essentially fit into the Nancy Drew line—if, that is, anything happened in Rose Harbor that involved action and not talk. The storyline about Jo Marie and the late Paul seems rushed and almost perfunctory, as if the author doesn’t quite trust it as a dramatic element, but she gets on surer ground when she introduces another character whose life has been made unhappy thanks to a machinery mishap. Macomber’s players are grief-ridden in different degrees and ways, and the saving grace of this book, full of explication and asides (“Josh had his own issues, his own scars. Richard seemed determined to leave matters as they were between them and to die alone”), is that the author recognizes that life is tough and that people need room to deal with that fact, dancing elaborately around one another and the issues until they get things figured out. And so it is in Rose Harbor, and if some of the narrative dashes the reader on mawkish shoals, at least there’s some nice smooching in the end (“[Y]ou’re an idiot, a very lovable idiot, but still an idiot”).
There’s also plenty of narrative room for the promised sequel for those who can’t wait to find out what happens to Mary Smith, Kent Shivers and the rest.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-345-52892-6
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2012
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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