A series only works when the characters are worth following over the long haul, and Hilderbrand is a master, making for a...
In the last installment of the charming Winter Street trilogy, the Quinn family braces for the storm of the century.
Unlike the first two novels, which span just a few days over two consecutive Christmases at the Quinn's historic Nantucket inn, the finale covers much of a year and shifts the focus from patriarch Kelley Quinn to his four children. Youngest son Bart is still missing in action in Afghanistan—the light in his childhood room has remained on for the past 18 months. Eldest son Patrick is serving the last few months of a prison sentence for fraud, while his wife Jennifer's patrician life is crumbling thanks to prescription drugs. Kevin, the flaky middle son approaching middle age, is finally coming into his own with a successful beachside eatery and a blooming confidence—he's finally proposed to girlfriend Isabelle. Lastly, Ava is in the enviable position (or not, depending on her mood) of dating both carpenter Nathaniel and vice principal Scott. Adding to her romantic confusion, she meets Potter, a professor at Columbia, who offers her a vision of a life beyond the island. As the Quinn children finally iron out their lives, Kelley confronts the end of his own—his cancer, thought to be in remission, has moved to his brain, with increasingly debilitating results. All is brought to a frantic head on Christmas Eve, the date of Kevin and Isabelle's wedding, when an impending snowstorm strands the guests off-island. If this all seems a bit soapy, Hilderbrand's tight pacing and breezy tone keep the story from heavy-handedness. But be warned: when Bart's MIA status finds resolution, tears may be shed.
A series only works when the characters are worth following over the long haul, and Hilderbrand is a master, making for a satisfying conclusion to her Christmas at the Inn story.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 9780316261173
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
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
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
