by Donna Norman-Carbone ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 6, 2023
A heartfelt, life-affirming novel tailor-made for readers who love stories of female friendship.
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The spirit of a woman killed in a car crash guides her friends and family toward healing in Norman-Carbone’s novel.
When Lynn, a woman in her 30s, and her husband, Scott, set out for a weekend getaway to work on their marriage, a car crash on an icy road ends her life. Lynn’s spirit is stuck in limbo, watching her friends and family struggle in her absence. Scott builds a shrine to her in his room, and her young daughters, Emma and Olivia, begin to forget things about her. Her friends—Jules, Helene, Annie, and Riley—once an inseparable group since high school, drift apart due to secrets and resentments. Able to influence her loved ones as a spirit, Lynn encourages her friends to meet up at her family’s beach cottage on the one-year anniversary of her death to repair their bond and enable them to help Scott and the girls heal. As her friends argue and reminisce, Lynn learns things she never knew and starts to come to terms with her own life and death as her friends find closure. The story is more concerned with the relationships between Lynn and her loved ones than creative depictions of the afterlife (Lynn exists mostly in a shadowy replica of her home on Earth and can communicate with her loved ones more easily than she could in life). The emotional payoff of the story far outweighs the narrative conveniences used to make it happen. The linchpin of the novel is the women’s friend group—including the secrets that pulled them apart and the loyalty to Lynn that brings them back together (“This is what it feels like to be us, girls with a shared past. No matter the circumstances, we always make each other feel warm and cozy—just like home”). The dynamics among the women, both as a group and in separate pairs, are very well developed. The text captures the ways women feel the need to model perfection for each other and illustrates how covering up weaknesses allows them to fester. There is catharsis in the way each of the women, particularly Lynn, allows herself to be imperfect and in the healing that comes from that vulnerability.
A heartfelt, life-affirming novel tailor-made for readers who love stories of female friendship.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9781958231067
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Rebecca Yarros ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 2023
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.
A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.
Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374172
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
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SEEN & HEARD
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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New York Times Bestseller
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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