by Hallie Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 6, 2021
An engaging story of friendship, loss, and faith told through two well-drawn characters.
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Two friends ride the ups and downs of adolescence and beyond in this Christian novel.
Robin and Desiare not friends at first sight. When Desi first moves to Shady Gully, Louisiana, at the end of junior high, Robin wants nothing to do with her, mostly because everyone keeps telling Robin they look exactly alike: “You gotta see her, Robin. She looks just like you. Except she’s good lookin’.” But the girls’ outsider status—Desi’s religiosity is strange in Shady Gully while Robin is a perennial social outcast—soon leads them into a friendship of necessity. The girls head into high school, helping each other navigate the treacherous waters of popularity, self-esteem issues, and boys. They remain best friends after graduation, but their lives begin to drift in different directions. Desi ends up with a working-class husband and three kids before Robin and her executive husband even have one. Resentment begins to build, but not around the issues one might expect. Desi has long kept a secret from Robin, one that she has never found a way to share. As fractures begin to form in their long-standing friendship, will Robin and Desi manage to be there for each other during times of trouble? In this series opener, Lee’s prose is fluid and full of personality. She switches back and forth between the two friends by chapter, capturing the particular psychologies of each. Here, Robin considers Desi’s positive effect on her life in school: “Something had changed this summer in the way I thought of myself. I didn’t hate myself so much. Whether it was because Desi loved me back, or because I didn’t feel so alone anymore, or because I had something to look forward to every day, somehow I felt more included and significant.” The book often treads into sentimentality, and it does not quite delve into some of the issues it raises as deeply as readers may like. But fans of Christian fiction should appreciate this more nuanced, human approach to the genre.
An engaging story of friendship, loss, and faith told through two well-drawn characters.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-952474-26-2
Page Count: 302
Publisher: WordCrafts Press
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hannah Kaner ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2024
A bold series continuation from a fantasy author to watch.
In a world where old gods can pass away, new divinities may be born.
Hseth, the fire god whose cult murdered Kissen’s family in Godkiller (2023), is no more. However, problems continue to mount for the intrepid young warriors who managed to kill her. The orphaned Inara and her minor-god companion, Skedi, persevere on a seemingly unending search for answers—she to the questions surrounding her paternity, he to an illustrious past he cannot recall. In the aftermath of the climactic battle, King Arren has chosen a path that his best friend, Elo the baker-knight, cannot bring himself to follow, and Elo must reckon with the ramifications of turning his back on his liege. Just as Arren stokes the fires of his own illicit cult—with himself as figurehead—a resistance movement to save what remains of the world’s outlawed gods begins to heat up. Unable to come to terms with Elo’s desire to keep her away from the dangers of war, Inara makes a rash decision that ultimately sets the stage for mass unrest shortly before Arren’s victory tour arrives at their doorstep. Meanwhile, a presumed-dead Kissen fights her way back from the shores of the god who saved her life, only to find herself at odds with her friends’ and family’s goals. You see, Elo, Inara, and the rest have forgotten one very simple rule: Dead gods can always come back. Tested alliances fuel this tightly plotted found-family thrill ride. The worldbuilding is complex, but the reader never feels bogged down beneath its weight. As with the previous installment, queerness and disability are woven into the fabric of the narrative; Kissen and her sisters are queer and disabled, a prominent secondary character is transgender, and several tertiary couples are gay and lesbian. Although the pacing does become a little too frenetic in the novel’s final chapters, as the point of view switches rapidly among protagonists, Kaner has penned another page-turner in this projected trilogy.
A bold series continuation from a fantasy author to watch.Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9780063350106
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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by Hannah Kaner
by Anna Quindlen ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2024
While Quindlen may lean too hard on the hope motif at the end, this is an emotionally satisfying, absorbing story.
When the title character dies suddenly of an aneurysm, her husband, four children and best friend must deal with their grief and find a path forward.
Annie Fonzheimer grew up in small-town Greengrass, Pennsylvania, and never left. She married “too fast and too young” when she got pregnant by local boy Bill Brown, a plumber by trade. Annie works long hours as an aide at a nursing home and tends to her four children, ages 6 to 13, in a small house that belongs to her mother-in-law, the prickly Dora. But Annie, high-spirited and much adored, is content with her “lovely reliable” life, even if it’s not exactly what she’d expected. She’s a vibrant presence in this novel, despite getting bumped off in the first sentence. Quindlen weaves Annie’s backstory with an account of her survivors, who suffer mightily in her absence. Without her mother, eldest child Ali watches over her younger siblings and navigates a friendship with a girl who harbors a disturbing secret. Best pal Annemarie, whom Annie helped save from drug addition, must decide if she can persevere without her friend’s steadying hand. And Bill, who wasn’t sure about marrying Annie at first—and then found he couldn’t imagine life without her—must sort out his feelings for a woman he was involved with before his wife. Quindlen, whose own mother died when she was 19, is good at this sort of domestic drama, elevating material that might seem over-familiar, even maudlin in other hands; the well-drawn characters and sharp observations keep the reader engaged. “Maybe grief was like homesickness,” Bill muses at one point, “something that wasn’t just about a specific person, but about losing that feeling that you were where you belonged….” Actually, not a lot happens until the novel’s final section, in which, arguably, too much happens.
While Quindlen may lean too hard on the hope motif at the end, this is an emotionally satisfying, absorbing story.Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9780593229804
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
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