An engrossing emotional drama, both shocking and thoughtful.
In this novel, an adopted woman finally finds her birth mother and father, a remarkable discovery that delivers both joy and confusion.
Elizabeth Schmidt had a pleasant upbringing, but as an adopted child, she felt the pangs of a haunting incompleteness. The difference between her and her adoptive family “lay silent and undisturbed between us like a sleeping dog with an uncertain pedigree.” Despite Elizabeth’s great academic and professional success, her personal life is not fully satisfying despite three marriages and five children. Then her adoptive mother, Marie, lets it slip that she received a communication from Alice Maher, Elizabeth’s birth mother’s sister, possibly about an inheritance of some kind, but proceeded to destroy the letter. Elizabeth decides to find Alice—she even hires a private detective—and learns that her mother, Liddy, is actually alive, despite Marie’s declarations to the contrary. Martin, with great subtly and sensitivity, chronicles Elizabeth’s poignant search for her true self and her yearning to fill the “proverbial black hole” of her unknown ancestry. But Elizabeth’s initial euphoria after locating Liddy discovers a darker counterpoint when she also finds her father, Ned, and falls romantically in love with him. Elizabeth soon realizes that Liddy, despite being married to a man named Andy, harbors her own romantic designs on Ned. Martin’s tale is a complex, entangled one filled with unpredictable twists and turns. The story forthrightly discusses the astonishingly illicit affair between Elizabeth and Ned, a provocative subplot handled without a hint of prurient sensationalism. The author deftly shows the emotionally bifurcated world that Elizabeth now inhabits: “But at that moment, I realized I was more like Marie than Liddy. Applying a suitcase full of makeup to perfect my facial features or wearing sexy clothes to draw attention to myself was simply not who I was. Any attempt to reconfigure me as such was destined to fail. Although the beautiful world of Liddy attracted me, I lived in the unadorned and practical world of Marie.” This is a moving novel, crackling with sexual volatility and emotional intelligence.
An engrossing emotional drama, both shocking and thoughtful.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73523-884-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Misericordia Publishing, USA
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
The mystery plot and the Italian idyl both play supporting roles in this fairy tale for grownups.
Scottoline’s latest links her great love of Italy with her long record of female-centered crime fiction.
Julia Pritzker has a presentiment that something terrible is around the corner, but she never imagines just how terrible: When her husband, Philadelphia attorney Mike Shallette, tries to protect her from a man who grabs her designer bag, he gets stabbed to death before her eyes. Julia’s grief becomes laced with guilt when she realizes that her daily horoscope had predicted a calamity she’s now convinced she could have prevented. The news from Italian attorney Massimiliano Lombardi that his late client has left her millions in cash and an estate worth nearly as much again doesn’t comfort her, but it does provide distraction—especially since she’s never heard of Emilia Rossi and has no idea why she’s been chosen as her heir. Since Julia, adopted at an early age by a couple who’ve been dead for years, wonders if Emilia might have been her biological grandmother, she travels to Chianti in hope of recovering some of Emilia’s DNA. Unfortunately, caretakers Anna Mattia Vesta and Piero Fano have burned all of Emilia’s clothing and personal items on her orders, so there’s nothing left to test. Growing convinced that the stars are directing her and that her history is rooted in Emilia’s decrepit house, Julia turns down repeated offers for the property and resolves to secure evidence confirming the relationship between Emilia and her. Now all she has to do is protect herself from the shadowy figures tracking and following her and recover from a series of vivid, hallucinatory nightmares that seem to be the cost of claiming her heritage.
The mystery plot and the Italian idyl both play supporting roles in this fairy tale for grownups.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781538769997
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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