A satisfying romance with well-drawn characters.
A devastating car accident forces a happily married couple to confront a new reality in this novel.
When Serena Irving met Oliver Wolfe at a firemen’s carnival in St. Caroline, a small town on the eastern shore of Maryland, their attraction was immediate. After a whirlwind romance, the Princeton-educated daughter of a wealthy New York family married the firefighter and settled in St. Caroline despite her parents’ objections. Eight years later, Serena and Oliver have two sons, Mason and Cam, and she is pregnant again when a car accident leaves her in a coma for four months. When she wakes, Oliver is surprised to discover Serena has no memory of the past seven years. After physical therapy, she returns to a house she does not recognize and tries to adjust to life as the mother of two young sons. She finds support from her best friend, Ashley Wardman, a photographer coping with the recent death of her husband, Ben. Oliver, reeling from the death of his mother, Angie, tries to help; but he senses something is different about his wife. As her memories return, Serena discovers she has a talent for teaching. When a letter arrives for Serena from an attorney representing Ben, Oliver suspects that his wife may have had a secret life. This fourth installment of Gabriel’s (Hearts on Fire, 2017, etc.) St. Caroline series is an appealing contemporary romance and an affecting portrait of a family recovering after a shattering tragedy. The story opens with Serena emerging from her coma. The author deftly establishes the history of Serena and Oliver’s relationship through flashbacks and their memories. The two are winsome protagonists whose romance endures despite her parents’ belief that the couple would “split up within the year.” While Oliver’s suspicions about his wife seem overblown, the subplot does allow the author to effectively explore the firefighter’s fears that the life he can offer Serena in St. Caroline cannot compete with her privileged upbringing. Readers of the series will recognize characters from the previous installments, including Becca Trevor and Jack Wolfe as well as other members of their extended families.
A satisfying romance with well-drawn characters.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9996548-9-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Serif Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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