May appeal to a niche readership with a high tolerance for tedium.
Third in a bland series about a British knit-shop owner.
McNeil’s dubious strategy appears to be this: Take an inherently tame subject and make it even tamer. Having relocated from London to the sleepy seaside town of Broadgate Bay, Jo Mackenzie has finally achieved equilibrium after presumably more exciting upheavals in previous books (Divas Don’t Knit, 2007, etc.). Her globe-trotting, philandering reporter husband Nick, father of Jo’s two sons, announced he wanted a divorce shortly before he was killed in a car crash. While visiting her singularly unsupportive parents in Venice, Jo had a consolatory fling with Daniel, a top fashion photographer, resulting in an unplanned pregnancy. Worse, she discovered she’s penniless since Nick mortgaged the family home. Now, Pearl, the unplanned baby, is going through her princess toddler phase and sons Archie and Jack are misbehaving in ways American parents could only dream of. For such a dull drudge, Jo has some interesting friends: Grace, a student in Jo’s knitting class, also happens to be a movie star (Broadgate’s answer to Julia Roberts?), and Ellen is host of a weekly TV interview program. In the romance department, carpenter and computer guru Martin, he of the lovable but untrainable hound Trevor, puts Jo to sleep on their first date. Will this be a regular occurrence, Jo’s friends speculate endlessly? Only time will tell. (The soporific effect on readers, however, will be immediate.) Halfway through, crisis looms when Jo’s parents come to visit, imposing themselves on Jo’s grandmother and threatening to disrupt a big event: Grace has agreed to be Ellen’s first guest at an episode to be filmed at Jo’s knit shop. Slowed by bloated and repetitious dialogue, child-rearing minutia (no detail spared about family routines, meals, school activities, etc.), lame attempts at cuteness and an almost complete absence of conflict, the story fizzles long before a major complication can salvage it.
May appeal to a niche readership with a high tolerance for tedium.Pub Date: Dec. 27, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4013-4167-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Voice/Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011
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
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
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