With lust, passion and ire to spare, Alden’s freshman offering doesn’t disappoint.
A debut novel that illustrates the fine line between love and hate.
Paisley is an 18-year-old recovering addict whose parents, along with sister Caroline, treat her with nothing but disdain and disrespect. Always acting out, and known for her rather loose reputation—despite being a virgin—Paisley may be a bit immature and irresponsible, but she has her reasons. Usually, her antics result in a bit of familial humiliation; however, when Caroline brings her snobby yet dashing fiance, James, home to meet the family, things go from simple humiliation to giant disaster. Unable to deny their attraction, James and Paisley get off to an inappropriate start; things only get worse after Paisley, posing as her sister, tricks an inebriated James into a night of unbridled passion. Fed up with Caroline’s superior attitude and cruel treatment, Paisley delivers a shocking wedding speech that changes the course of their lives. Now, seven years later, Paisley is determined to right all her wrongs in an effort to earn back the love of a man who may never forgive her and that of another whom she has never met—her son. Touching on the intriguing idea of virginal pregnancy, Alden creates an interesting character in Paisley, who seems to want to do the right thing, though she might lack the tools. Despite an ability to “see peoples’ truths,” Paisley hasn’t been very lucky in love; however, it’s directly due to this ability that Paisley is able to see through James and read his longing and desire to possess her in all ways. By the same token, James seems to possess a similar power enabling him to see through Paisley—and it’s this connection that solidifies their fates. While Paisley could be seen as incorrigible, Alden shades her with enough vulnerability that she garners more sympathy than rancor; what Paisley seems to lack in morals, she more than makes up for in determination. It also helps that, through their appalling behavior, Paisley’s family members add a bit of validation to Paisley’s antics. Alden’s narrative voice is captivating and her writing quite good, and though the story isn’t terribly complex, it’s definitely a page-turner.
With lust, passion and ire to spare, Alden’s freshman offering doesn’t disappoint.Pub Date: June 2, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Carina Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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