Best for hopeless romantics.
In this debut novel, a college professor and his former student conduct a slow romance fueled by his poetry.
After a present-day prefatory first chapter, the novel—told in alternating first-person narrations—turns back 10 years to the fateful meeting in Flagstaff, Arizona, of Peter DuBois, 30, and his English 201 student, Elaine Emerson, 20. He’s immediately drawn to her vibrancy and blue eyes and they begin talking after class. Both appreciate Jane Austen’s refined sensibility; both adore the movie Shakespeare in Love. Though they find each other alluring, she intends to stay a virgin until marriage, and Peter wants her to be “unencumbered.” They settle into a tender but platonic relationship, “a magnetic confluence of two souls now merged to one,” sometimes so deep that they can hear each other’s thoughts. They share snuggles and kisses on romantic get-togethers; Peter writes her love poetry; he asks her to marry him. Elaine agrees, but not yet: “I so want to enjoy us now while we’re as free and wild as summer’s soft rambling winds.” But the strains of school and work, and the imagined difficulties of marriage (“Two children? Good-bye medical career”), separate them. At 30, Elaine is ready to date—but no man compares to Peter. Can the stars align for them at last? In his debut novel, Mazur presents two people so given to high-flown rhapsody that they, and their relationship, rarely seem convincing. A six-month separation, for example, is described as “losing each other for eons in another dimension.” Dialogue is often lecture-y: “To love the beautiful within, Elaine, is to seek love of soul, that which cannot be seen and is immortal.” At the same time, attitudes about the body are often giggly and unsophisticated, with frequent mentions of going “commando.” The book is given to risibly overpraising Peter, whether for his poetry (“absolutely astonishing”) or his bratwurst: “That he was a master sausage maker was quite surprising….Where did one get the time for all this accomplishment?”
Best for hopeless romantics.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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