An often compelling wartime drama despite uneven prose.
In this historical novel set during World War II, a British pilot’s dangerous service takes a toll on his marriage.
In 1942, Malta has been reduced to a “land of privation of suffering” but remains a strategically crucial territory despite its small size. Eleanor Shaux, stationed in Malta with the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, captures the significance of the island succinctly in dialogue: “If we lose Malta, we lose the Med. If we lose the Med, we lose the Suez Canal and our access to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. If we lose that, we lose the war.” To make matters worse, a massive confrontation looms with Gen. Erwin Rommel, the most skilled tactician in the German military, who has Malta in his sights. Eleanor’s husband, Johnnie Shaux, is in the Royal Air Force, and he’s known as a “fighter pilot’s fighter pilot” who braves danger repeatedly and believes his death will come in the “blinding glare of the killing fields.” The situation challenges the couple’s marriage, and Eleanor wonders if she’s complicit in Johnnie’s near-certain fate—that she’s “sacrificed her husband to the gods of war.” Rhodes’ knowledge of the historical circumstances of this tale, which crescendo with the siege of Malta, is magisterial—rigorous and granular but also with an impressive sense of context. He also sensitively captures the psyche of the fighter pilot, who must strenuously maintain vigilance and composure. The prose strains unsuccessfully for poetic profundity at times, as in this description of the military office’s disheveled design: “It was easy to get lost, and Eleanor sometimes wondered if the mythical Minotaur—half man, half bull—would suddenly spring, snarling, from around some stygian corner.” However, these moments don’t undermine the novel’s overall power, which largely lies in its historical astuteness.
An often compelling wartime drama despite uneven prose.Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73537-362-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: John Rhodes
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.
Best friends confront feelings for each other when they take a honeymoon trip together.
Francesca Gardiner and George Saint James have always been best friends—just like Jo and Laurie from Little Women, which they both love. Frankie has a big, complicated family and George was the boy next door who’d moved in with his eccentric grandmother. Their friendship survived childhood, awkward teenage years, and living together as young adults without ever venturing into the romantic—well, except for one kiss, but they don’t talk about that. When Frankie gets engaged to an older professor named Nate, George isn’t happy and a huge fight ensues. Despite his misgivings, George shows up to be her best man, but Nate leaves Frankie right before the wedding with only a cryptic letter. Devastated, Frankie goes to a friend’s house to recuperate, but her honeymoon is already planned and paid for—so she decides to travel to Tofino, a picturesque town on the coast of Vancouver Island, with George taking Nate’s place. Frankie wants to fix her friendship with George, but now that they’re in a romantic suite in a beautiful location, things are more complicated than ever. She’d always thought a relationship would be a bad idea, but she’s slowly beginning to realize they’ll never be able to go back to being kids. Maybe the only way forward involves forging a new kind of relationship. Fortune, the author of romances like This Summer Will Be Different (2024), returns with another love story full of longing and intense angst. The many allusions to Little Women are charming, and Frankie is a delightfully headstrong, feisty character. She and George have explosive chemistry, and Fortune manages to make the “will-they-or-won’t-they” nature of their relationship feel like life-or-death stakes.
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9780593953242
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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