A poignant and heartfelt contemporary romance.
A widow recovering from a devastating accident finds hope and renewal in an unlikely place in this series opener.
Kara Lange Hart is no stranger to tragedy and loss. When Kara was 14 years old, her mother, Susan, abruptly left the family and was discovered dead two years later in Ohio. Later, Kara marries her college sweetheart, Niles, and moves to northern Virginia. After six years of marriage, she is thrilled to learn she is pregnant; but before she can tell Niles, the couple is involved in a car accident. Niles is killed instantly, and Kara suffers a miscarriage along with serious injuries. Bereft, Kara moves in with her father, Henry, to recuperate. When her father tells her that he is planning to purchase a Victorian mansion in an area of Louisa County called Cub Creek, she decides to move with him and stay until she can find a new job and place of her own. While the mansion needs renovating, Kara is struck by the property’s beauty, particularly the field of wildflowers behind the house. She soon befriends her new neighbors Nicole Albers, a real estate agent and close friend of her father’s, and Nicole’s brother, Seth, and settles into the quieter pace of life in Cub Creek. The move also prompts the usually reserved Henry to open up to Kara about his difficult childhood and the tragic circumstances of her mother’s death. Kara sees the possibility of a life in Cub Creek when a tragedy forces her to decide whether to leave her new friends or remain in the community she has grown to love. This first installment of Greene’s (The Memory of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) Wildflower House series is an affecting and emotionally resonant tale of love, loss, and the possibility of second chances that’s bolstered by a winsome heroine, well-drawn supporting characters, and a nuanced story full of surprising twists and turns. Kara is a strong and dynamic protagonist whose physical and emotional recovery from the car accident that killed her husband lie at the center of the tale. She is surrounded by a vivid and likable supporting cast, including Henry, a dependable, hardworking man whose taciturn nature hides a secret sorrow; and Seth, a former journalist and self-described “guy-of-all-trades,” whose friendship with Kara slowly blossoms into something deeper and more significant. The setting plays a major role in the story, and the author deftly brings the community of Cub Creek and the Victorian mansion known as the Wildflower House to life, from the friendly real estate agent who knows whom to call to have something repaired to the descriptions of the breathtaking beauty of the wildflowers (“As a mass, they raised their bright faces to the sun, gathered its rays, and reflected the light from bloom to bloom, ultimately bouncing it back to greet my eyes”). The briskly paced narrative also includes several well-developed subplots, including Henry’s revelations about his past and Kara’s exploration of her marriage to Niles. The tale may appeal to fans of Debbie Macomber or Nicholas Sparks.
A poignant and heartfelt contemporary romance.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-4060-0
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Finding positivity in negative pregnancy-test results, this depiction of a marriage in crisis is nearly perfect.
Named for an imperfectly worded fortune cookie, Hoover's (It Ends with Us, 2016, etc.) latest compares a woman’s relationship with her husband before and after she finds out she’s infertile.
Quinn meets her future husband, Graham, in front of her soon-to-be-ex-fiance’s apartment, where Graham is about to confront him for having an affair with his girlfriend. A few years later, they are happily married but struggling to conceive. The “then and now” format—with alternating chapters moving back and forth in time—allows a hopeful romance to blossom within a dark but relatable dilemma. Back then, Quinn’s bad breakup leads her to the love of her life. In the now, she’s exhausted a laundry list of fertility options, from IVF treatments to adoption, and the silver lining is harder to find. Quinn’s bad relationship with her wealthy mother also prevents her from asking for more money to throw at the problem. But just when Quinn’s narrative starts to sound like she’s writing a long Facebook rant about her struggles, she reveals the larger issue: Ever since she and Graham have been trying to have a baby, intimacy has become a chore, and she doesn’t know how to tell him. Instead, she hopes the contents of a mystery box she’s kept since their wedding day will help her decide their fate. With a few well-timed silences, Hoover turns the fairly common problem of infertility into the more universal problem of poor communication. Graham and Quinn may or may not become parents, but if they don’t talk about their feelings, they won’t remain a couple, either.
Finding positivity in negative pregnancy-test results, this depiction of a marriage in crisis is nearly perfect.Pub Date: July 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7159-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
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