Not every idea’s a good one.
New York Times best-seller Peterson (The Manny, 2007) presents the tale of a PR executive who experiences a wake-up call when a mysterious woman challenges her to face reality and rearrange her priorities.
At 34, New York City resident Allie Crawford strives to balance a career and family, but lately, she’s been doing the lion’s share of the work. Husband Wade, an ambitious magazine editor, is constantly busy. Allie’s disturbed by his behavior but says little: She’s always validated her self-worth through the eyes of others, particularly the men in her life. Allie’s dad, once her rock, died years ago in a tragic accident, and the circumstances still haunt her. She pushed away best friend and would-be lover James, but she still has unresolved feelings for him. Murray, Allie’s boss, expects her to be available 24/7, and Allie usually accommodates his demands. And Allie’s sick to death of Wade’s endless parties for clientele, but she continues to play the obliging hostess. Wade and Allie have survived rough patches in their marriage up until now, but when a poker chip tumbles out of his pocket and beautiful blonde Jackie shows up and disappears in their lives with genielike dexterity, Allie suspects there’s hanky-panky afoot. But Jackie’s not what Allie expects. Although she dresses to the nines in last year’s runway fashions, she has a head for business and warns Allie that her family’s financial future is in jeopardy. Throwing logic and any semblance of good dialogue and well-defined plot to the wayside, Peterson’s female protagonists embark on a vague cloak-and-dagger investigation encompassing an ex-con parking-lot mogul, a computer networking company, a film festival and some ominous looking SUVs. And, of course, there are other problems: Allie’s having trouble developing a scene for her screenwriting class until Tommy, a fellow student, takes control and encourages Allie to spill her guts about her past, especially all the explicit sexual details, and make out with him. After several more revelations—about Tommy and everyone from Murray’s gardener to the guys in the SUVs—Allie experiences an epiphany: A strong woman doesn’t need a man’s approval to move forward! Readers who make it to the end of this book might experience an epiphany of their own: To engage the reader, stronger writing and a certain degree of credibility are necessary.
Not every idea’s a good one.Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-228310-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
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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