A gripping Afghan tale starring a strong hero wielding a camera.
A photojournalist returns to Afghanistan, where a Taliban resurgence mars her reunion with her best friend in this novel.
Annie Hawkins Green, a Pulitzer Prize–winning photojournalist embedded with the coalition forces in southern Afghanistan, carries personal and professional baggage. She is a guilt-ridden, divorced woman whose “insane travel schedule” has made it necessary for her moody 15-year-old daughter to live with her ex-husband. She is still haunted by a previous incident in Afghanistan eight and a half years ago when a breach of military protocol escalated into a vicious terrorist attack that claimed the life of a young village girl with whom she had bonded. “I’ll come back,” she vows. “I promise. And next time, I’ll bring enough cameras for all the kids to have one.” She gets that opportunity when her best friend, Darya Faludi, an Afghan immigrant, relocates her family back to her native country to open a secondary school for girls, “which will give them a chance for an education, help them learn to think for themselves and become real citizens of the twenty-first century.” Annie agrees to teach a photography workshop. She is reunited with the Navy SEAL who helped rescue her. Later, a SEAL-led operation has far-reaching consequences, particularly for Darya’s family and her teenage daughter, Seema, who has been keeping suspicious company. Sacken, a college English professor and herself a photographer and world traveler, conveys a visceral sense of place, as keenly observed as the landscape photos featured on her website. “I could die here, today, in this cave high in the Hindu Kush Mountains,” Annie reflects during one tense moment. “No need for a body bag because no one will ever find me….No one will ever know what happened to me. Damn. How can I do this to my daughter?” Annie is a refreshingly relatable hero, brave enough to rise to the occasion but without gratuitous badass antics that would make her an easier sell to the big or small screen. Her romantic relationship with the SEAL likewise unfolds without purple prose. Only the standard-issue talking villain at the climax smacks of cliché. With some loose ends intriguingly left untied in the story, readers will anxiously await what develops for Annie.
A gripping Afghan tale starring a strong hero wielding a camera.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-64538-194-5
Page Count: 436
Publisher: Ten 16 Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
