Devotees of romance novels will enjoy the plot and perhaps forgive the stiff, naïve narration.
When a letter never makes it to its intended recipient, the consequences start to fall like dominos.
As a teenager, Trudy fell in love with Richard, a young Dutchman whose family owned a farm in America. His family, however, disapproved of their relationship. He returned to the Netherlands for school and sent Trudy a letter declaring his love and begging her to reciprocate. That letter fell behind a wall cabinet in a U.S. Post Office and was lost for 35 years. When he didn’t hear from her, Richard sent Trudy a second letter ending their relationship. Both Richard and Trudy went on to marry others and build happy lives, he as a wildly successful international businessman, she as a teacher. The first letter then reappears just as Trudy’s 24-year marriage to Kenneth is on shaky ground, and she finds herself facing a lifetime’s worth of what ifs. Trudy wrestles with the thrill of seeing her teenage love as a grown-up—not to mention suave and wealthy—man, while at the same time anticipating Kenneth’s return from Iraq, mending her marriage, planning her daughter’s engagement party and trying to hold onto her job. Stevens (Inn in Abingdon, 2011) turns Trudy’s story into a modern, middle-aged princess fantasy, as she gets a small taste of what her life could have been like as the wife of an international business tycoon. Unsurprisingly—yet satisfyingly—she realizes who her true love is, but misunderstandings and more lost items complicate her path back to him. Stevens checks off all the romance novel requirements, including idealized characters with idealized looks: “The Queen Anne cheval mirror reflected her curvy figure as she slid her hands from her waist and over her hips. Turning sideways, Trudy could see the results of her exercise routine that kept her weight down and her figure firm.” The plot moves swiftly through the second half of the book, but as a whole, it is weighed down by pages of exposition and stilted dialogue.
Devotees of romance novels will enjoy the plot and perhaps forgive the stiff, naïve narration.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2013
ISBN: 978-1936553273
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Warwick House Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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