by Jonathan Epps ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A dark, literary family saga played out across the open road with characters readers won’t want to leave behind.
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Epps chronicles the damage wrought by a broken family in this third installment of his American Wrath trilogy.
Charles “Chuck” Hardy is struggling: his 4-year-old son Brian has begun to display some tendencies that indicate he may have attention deficit disorder and is perhaps autistic, too; simultaneously, Chuck finds himself trapped in a loveless marriage to Samantha (“Sam”), a former airline stewardess he married after impregnating her during a one-night stand in the mid-1990s. As she carries on a series of affairs, Chuck loses himself in the twin distractions of working and drinking. Brian, a loner and outcast from the start, has a few nerdy friends when he reaches high school, but even among those few companions, he is too shy to fully describe an unsettling situation that bedevils him: For a while now, he’s been followed around by a woman in a mysterious black Mercedes. Brian steadies himself enough to earn a partial scholarship to a state school a few hours from home. There, he again struggles socially, spending most of his freshman year quietly stalking a girl named Brandy. Though she disappears for a time, she reappears seemingly from nowhere in his senior year, and the two begin dating. Readers soon learn she’s after Brian for the protection she thinks he might offer on her post-collegiate cross-country journey to drum up Instagram followers and propel her to influencer stardom. While Brian’s parents sink further into their separate miseries, the relationship between Brian and Brandy deteriorates frighteningly, and readers discover that Brian was a victim of childhood sexual abuse—a pattern he reinforces by sexually assaulting Brandy during their trip.
Smoothly written and alluringly-paced, Epps’ third novel succeeds largely on the basis of its character development. Though Chuck is something of a flaccid, passive actor in his own life, readers grow sympathetic toward him once they meet his own useless father; sympathy for Brian is engendered in much the same way. The women in this novel are, perhaps, a bit less fully realized, as Brandy veers into a vanity-obsessed stereotype and Sam feels, at times, like a one-dimensional serial adulterer. Nevertheless, Brian and Chuck will keep readers engaged, warts and all. The author’s flair for description—“Down the highway, lit like a stroke of genius, a white stab of the sun bleached [Brian and Brandy’s] sightline”—peppers the work with memorable lines and genuine originality. Readers in search of a fast-paced page-turner may not find enough here to keep them flying through, but fans of a more literary approach will appreciate Epps’ well drawn characters. While “road” novels are an American tradition and therefore a somewhat crowded field, this work manages to distinguish itself by marrying that tradition to the modern experience of social media and the ways in which Gen Z desperately seeks to monetize their looks and a highly-curated, overly-romanticized, fantasy-driven lifestyle for recognition and remuneration. Finding oneself invested in characters with such glaring flaws is sure to be a satisfying reading experience for those who take the plunge.
A dark, literary family saga played out across the open road with characters readers won’t want to leave behind.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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by Alison Espach ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 30, 2024
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
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Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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