A time-traveling wife and mother who lives in London becomes obsessed with spending time with her own long-lost mother.
Thirty-six-year-old Faye was adopted by kindly neighbors as a child. She and her mother lived down the road from Em and Henry, and when Faye was 8, her mother came down with a bad cough and then was just gone. The decades passed, but as an adult—despite a happy childhood, a loving marriage, and two beloved young daughters of her own—Faye continued to have an aching hole in her heart where her mother should have been. A string of events leads her to step into an empty box that a Space Hopper toy had arrived in one Christmas when she was a child. She ends up spinning through time, landing in her mother’s house. The box is a portal between her past and present. That present includes Faye’s husband, Eddie, long in finance, who is training to be a vicar. Much of this volume is spent contemplating the meaning of faith, trust, belief in things you cannot see, and whether it takes more to believe in the concept of God or in time travel. The premise of the book is, of course, fantastical, but Fisher deals well with the emotional and physical implications such a situation would have on a woman and a marriage. No time is spent dwelling on how or why things happen—this book is much more interested in relying on blind trust. The same trust that Faye must have in her husband’s belief that God called him to be a vicar, he must have in her time traveling, and the reader must have in the story.
Readers interested in pondering the basis of faith and how far it can stretch will find much to contemplate in this story.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982142-67-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | PARANORMAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
44
GET IT
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
Categories: ROMANCE | CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE | GENERAL ROMANCE | GENERAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The years pass by at a fast and steamy clip in Blume’s latest adult novel (Wifey, not reviewed; Smart Women, 1984) as two friends find loyalties and affections tested as they grow into young women. In sixth grade, when Victoria Weaver is asked by new girl Caitlin Somers to spend the summer with her on Martha’s Vineyard, her life changes forever. Victoria, or more commonly Vix, lives in a small house; her brother has muscular dystrophy; her mother is unhappy, and money is scarce. Caitlin, on the other hand, lives part of the year with her wealthy mother Phoebe, who’s just moved to Albuquerque, and summers with her father Lamb, equally affluent, on the Vineyard. The story of how this casual invitation turns the two girls into what they call "Summer sisters" is prefaced with a prologue in which Vix is asked by Caitlin to be her matron of honor. The years in between are related in brief segments by numerous characters, but mostly by Vix. Caitlin, determined never to be ordinary, is always testing the limits, and in adolescence falls hard for Von, an older construction worker, while Vix falls for his friend Bru. Blume knows the way kids and teens speak, but her two female leads are less credible as they reach adulthood. After high school, Caitlin travels the world and can’t understand why Vix, by now at Harvard on a scholarship and determined to have a better life than her mother has had, won’t drop out and join her. Though the wedding briefly revives Vix’s old feelings for Bru, whom Caitlin is marrying, Vix is soon in love with Gus, another old summer friend, and a more compatible match. But Caitlin, whose own demons have been hinted at, will not be so lucky. The dark and light sides of friendship breathlessly explored in a novel best saved for summer beachside reading.
Pub Date: May 8, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-32405-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
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.
