A well-paced story about suffering from and finding a way out of an abusive relationship.
In Dee’s novel, a woman contends with an emotionally manipulative husband.
Sweet, shy Emily Grace Davidson doesn’t have many friends, but she “was born with innate confidence and creativity that kept [her] reading and exploring all kinds of fascinating subjects.” She’s a hard worker and dreams of becoming a fashion designer, but she sublimates her career goals and aspirations when she meets the handsome Blake Denton. “I knew he was ‘the one’ ” she narrates—a concept that may have been inspired by the fact that she “grew up on Disney princesses and soap operas.” Their courtship is slow to start, but once they begin dating in earnest, Emily is smitten. There are elements to Blake’s personality, including his deep insecurity, that give Emily pause, but she devotes herself to him entirely and tells him details about her previous relationships. Blake wins over Emily’s entire family, but she finds herself spending more time with him until he’s her sole comforter and confidant. More warning signs appear, which she refuses to heed, including trouble with money, dishonesty, and a lack of sexual intimacy. Determined not to give up on the man of her dreams, she gets pulled deeper into Blake’s emotional manipulations until it’s unclear if she’ll ever be able to dig herself out. Dee dedicates her novel to “every victim and every survivor of emotional abuse,” noting that “It’s time to break the cycle and find the power in our stories.” Over the course of this story, she successfully shows how slowly such emotional abuse can build, as Blake’s seemingly innocuous comments to Emily steadily escalate into terrible financial problems and betrayal. Dee also spends a lot of time detailing how besotted Emily is, and some of these descriptions can feel clichéd, as when Emily notes, “He was hot and sexy, and his gemstone eyes burned right through me.” However, such passages also serve a clear purpose, as they help to make readers understand why it would be so hard for Emily to leave—even as everything in her life starts to go awry.
A well-paced story about suffering from and finding a way out of an abusive relationship.Pub Date: July 14, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 191
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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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