A combination of fact and fiction that’s somewhat slow but often engaging.
A historical novel that explores the causes and repercussions of one of the most well-known tragedies of the 20th century.
Kate Royston is aboard the RMS Carpathiaruefully celebrating her 21st birthday, as she’s broke and fleeing a horrible, secret tragedy in a life she’s left behind her. Out for a nighttime stroll, she has a conversation with radio officer Harold Cottam about distress signals received from the RMS Titanicof the White Star Line. After changing course and proceeding to the scene of the sinking, the crew and passengers of the Carpathiahelp to rescue and care for more than 700 people who made it into lifeboats. Kate finds herself caring for the wealthy, well-connected widow Eva Trentham, who’s determined to force a U.S. Senate inquiry into the tragedy, with the hope of taking down J.P. Morgan, the ship’s de facto owner. Among the survivors is Danny McSorley, a radio operator who sets about helping Cottam manage the high volume of messages about survivors, but he too has secrets—not the least of which is how he managed to get a seat on a lifeboat, as he’s not a woman or child. Through Kate’s interactions and via the Senate inquiry, readers witness accounts from many other survivors, including immigrants in third-class accommodations; a few surviving officers, including second officer Charles Lightoller; White Star Line chairman Bruce Ismay; civilian passenger Jack Thayer, who now inherits his father’s fortune; and lookout Frederick Fleet. Many of the events leading up to, during, and immediately after the sinking of the Titanicwill be familiar to readers, as they’ve been well documented and portrayed onscreen. This book focuses on revealing key facts of the disaster through eyewitness accounts and official questioning that appear to be a mix of real-life sources and fictionalized dialogue. Hodgetts takes a highly familiar event and makes it fresh by weaving her own characters into the tapestry. The narrative is not as tight and briskly paced as readers might wish, however, due to the sheer volume of information included here.
A combination of fact and fiction that’s somewhat slow but often engaging.Pub Date: April 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-578-90320-0
Page Count: 363
Publisher: Emerge Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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