A captivating page-turner about three friends letting their true selves shine.
Three women face personal reckonings in Delaware in Webster’s debut novel, which highlights the power of female friendship.
The Summer Triangle is an astronomical phenomenon in which three unrelated stars appear linked and shine most brightly when seen together. Such is the relationship between Natalie, Eliana, and Allegra, three resilient women in their mid-30s. As the story unfolds, each woman finds herself at a crossroads where she must face weighty challenges and painful truths. Natalie is a successful interior designer whose unfaithful spouse is leaving her; she and her two kids spend the summer with her childhood friend, Eliana, in the coastal Delaware town of Rehoboth, where they grew up. Eliana’s life appears idyllic, but she’s struggling as a mother of young twins who’s given up her career as a translator. Allegra is an outsider—a supermodel whose life has been sabotaged by a psychologically abusive ex-husband. The three women meet when Natalie attempts to visit her childhood home, where Allegra now lives, and although the initial encounter goes badly (“We wouldn’t want to intrude,” says Eliana, and Allegra replies, “But that’s exactly what you would be doing: intruding”), they soon form a bond. The snappy, skillful dialogue flows naturally and provides each character with a distinctive voice. The plot moves along at a satisfying clip, never tempting readers to skip ahead. Each character’s arc is significant, but it’s Natalie who anchors the book, and whose story of recovery from abuse is the most complex and poignant. Some storylines are predictable (when Eliana’s brother meets Allegra, for instance, the trajectory of their relationship is easy to guess), but most twists and turns are unexpected. These women may be financially successful and remarkably attractive, but their problems are relatable and never seem trivial. Many serious themes arise, including the complexities of motherhood, marriage, and career and how friendship allows people to tackle past traumas. Romance is in the air, as well, along with more prosaic concerns and a lot of soul-searching.
A captivating page-turner about three friends letting their true selves shine.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9798891320055
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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