Such a cupcake of a book, it feels like you're doing something more self-indulgent than reading.
Ditched by her actor husband, a Manhattan mom takes a job at an Internet startup run by rude club kids with MBAs.
"Did Maya touch my dream catcher?" shrills Rory McGovern's New-Age–y mother-in-law on the last day of their stay at her un–air-conditioned house outside Woodstock. This is the 10th line of the book, and if it makes you laugh, you're all set, because the Nanny Diaries authors, McLaughlin and Kraus (The First Affair, 2013, etc.), are nonstop quippers, making this amiable work of midlife chick-lit quite a hoot. Rory's husband, Blake, an actor whose picture she had on her wall as a teenager and whom she met as an undergrad at SUNY Purchase—"I will die if I don't touch him"—is now, a couple of kids into their married life in New York City, drifting away. Part of the reason for his depression is that he's not getting any work, so Rory, who's a freelance stylist for shelter magazines, has to get a full-time job. She signs on to curate the design vertical (translation: "edit the interior decorating page") at a startup called JeuneBug, which bills itself as the first high-end lifestyle website for children, as in $15,000 acrylic "snowflake beds" and sharkskin wipe dispensers. In an office where "girls of sizes were now wearing things I once would have called panties to answer phones and populate spreadsheets," Rory is tyrannized by her 20-something boss, who shrieks things like, "obviously these should be force-ranked by potential ad rev clicks." Juggling her job, her suddenly single parenting, a bit of corporate intrigue, and a few suitors—the least promising of whom is her nasty boss's 24-year-old boyfriend—Rory forges bravely through this thoroughly modern mess.
Such a cupcake of a book, it feels like you're doing something more self-indulgent than reading.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4345-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© 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.
