An engaging tale about a gay stowaway on British navy ships during wartime.
A young Scottish man sneaks aboard a World War II transport ship in this debut gay erotic novel.
February 1940. The son of a shipbuilder’s agent, young Oliver Turner experienced his sexual awakening at the Glasgow shipyard in the arms of the men laboring to build the RMS Queen Elizabeth. It’s only appropriate then that he should stow away on the completed ocean liner as a means of escaping his dreary existence in Glasgow for a life of high adventure. He’s caught almost immediately, but luckily the man who discovers him, Senior First Officer Robert Bell, is willing to stay silent in exchange for making Ollie his shipboard plaything—a desirable amenity on a long voyage. But Ollie soon learns that the ship’s maiden voyage will not be ferrying passengers across the Atlantic. Now that war has begun, the Queen Elizabeth has been commandeered to transport British troops to foreign battlefields, dodging U-boats and the Luftwaffe along the way. The resourceful stowaway doesn’t keep to one ship but finds himself serving across a fleet’s worth of vessels, picking up lovers along the way. Ollie quickly discovers that life aboard a ship during wartime is no picnic—even when there are plenty of willing sailors to share a bunk with. Brennan’s prose is dense and wry, filled with colorful comparisons between ship parts and sailors’ anatomies: “His success with securing the roughest of men meant he had honed a skill for knowing—to draw from his shipyard wanderings—which of the men rendered hard through the toughest of ship-building tasks would want to rivet his hole soft.” The writing may prove a bit ornate for some readers, and there is some confusion at times as to which character is being referenced in the litany of he’s and him’s. Even so, fans of gay stories at sea should enjoy this immersive and period-specific picaresque, which manages to capture its milieu in a way that feels simultaneously timeless and contemporary.
An engaging tale about a gay stowaway on British navy ships during wartime.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2022
ISBN: 9780645555301
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Hard Crossing Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A steamy, romantic summer read with a charming setting.
A florist attempts to avoid her best friend’s brother—and their powerful chemistry—on Prince Edward Island.
When Lucy Ashby visits her best friend Bridget’s family home on Prince Edward Island for the first time, Bridget gives her three rules: Eat your weight in oysters….Leave the city behind. And, most importantly, Don’t fall in love with my brother. Unfortunately for Lucy, she sleeps with Felix basically the second her plane lands, unaware that he’s Bridget’s brother until it’s too late. Lucy has never felt understood or accepted by her immediate family, and Bridget is one of the very few people she allows into her inner circle, so Lucy’s desperate to abide by these rules. And so she and Felix try to avoid each other on every one of Lucy’s visits to PEI over the years. And, of course, they fail spectacularly, always returning to each other when they’re in between relationships. But it’s never been anything serious…Lucy makes sure of that, backing off whenever her emotions feel too strong. In her “real life” back in Toronto, it’s easier for Lucy to avoid thinking of Felix as she runs a busy floral shop, working herself into the ground. But when Bridget asks Lucy to come to PEI for an emergency girls’ trip less than two weeks before Bridget is supposed to get married, Lucy drops everything to be there for her best friend. She doesn’t expect to find Felix there, along with feelings that are stronger and more difficult than ever to ignore. Even more than jeopardizing her relationship with Bridget, Lucy is afraid that giving in to her feelings could ruin the life she’s worked so hard to build. Fortune, the author of hits like Every Summer After (2022), gives readers another refreshingly summery story full of angst, romance, and sex scenes aplenty. The PEI setting is a beautiful backdrop for Lucy and Felix’s secret hookups and Lucy’s journey of self-discovery as she learns how to stand on her own two feet as a business owner, friend, and daughter. In addition to frequent (and welcome) Anne of Green Gables references, there are oysters galore and many sandy, windy scenes that transport readers straight to the island.
A steamy, romantic summer read with a charming setting.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9780593638880
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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