A delightful heroine jumps into the past in order to embrace her future.
In this magic-tinged novel, time travel to the Prohibition era gives a grieving woman a way to change her life and save her family.
Following the death of her husband, 35-year-old Josephine Reynolds is wallowing in grief and wishing she could just disappear. Months later, she’s still unable to move forward, until her sister encourages her to buy their ancestral Nashville home. Josephine has big plans for renovating the house, including finding the perfect replacement for the shabby front door. She’s flabbergasted when the door she finds at a local salvage yard turns out to be the house’s original entryway, and, incredibly, it’s a doorway into the past. How is it possible that when Josephine uses the original key, she steps into the Jazz Age? It’s 1927, and Josephine quickly realizes what’s at stake. When she returns to the present, an internet search reveals that her great-grandmother Alma died during a raid on her basement speakeasy that year—and that she had no children at the time of her death. But if that’s what happened, how did Josephine’s grandmother and mother—and Josephine herself—come to be born? Josephine takes on the daunting task of stopping Alma’s death so her family can exist. Meanwhile, in the present, her possessions begin to disappear as if they and she are already being erased from the world. Fans of time travel will love this imaginative, high-stakes novel, as will fans of The Great Gatsby, thanks to the vivid descriptions of the Jazz Age, its parties, music, and dancing, and the way women were fighting for their rights and potential. Part fantasy, part romance, part coming-of-age story, this sweetly told tale of a woman’s search for her true self is imbued with Moorman’s trademark touch of magic.
A delightful heroine jumps into the past in order to embrace her future.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781400343638
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper Muse
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
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
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
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