Ultimately, Mrs. Saint turns her neighbor’s guilt trip into an uplifting journey to interdependence—one that will leave...
A disgraced socialite unwittingly joins a community of “defectives” when she rents a bungalow next to a meddling woman with a French accent and a secret past.
Ashamed of her ex-husband’s affair and financial failure, Markie tries to start a quiet life reviewing insurance claims from her home office to escape the scrutiny of her former friends and neighbors. But her new home, in addition to being less glamorous than the one she left, is not the sanctuary she was hoping for. Her new neighbor Angeline St. Denis—“But you will call me ‘Mrs. Saint’ if you are not prepared to pronounce ‘Denis’ correctly”—has other plans for her time. Before long, Markie and her teenage son, Jesse, are roped into helping Mrs. Saint’s many domestic employees, whom she refers to as “defectives,” with everything from babysitting to yardwork, and it’s unclear whether they are really defective or if Mrs. Saint’s meaning is lost in translation—all Markie knows is that Mrs. Saint is infuriatingly intrusive. She’s constantly turning up uninvited to offer a home-cooked meal, good advice, and help with home repairs just when Markie needs them most. The nerve! But Timmer (Untethered, 2016, etc.) inserts a sly dose of reality into this adult fantasy. Markie’s fractured relationship with her controlling and disapproving parents has left her wary of people who meddle, and she knows she's partly to blame for allowing her irresponsible, cheating husband to ruin both their lives while she looked the other way. So every time Mrs. Saint dodges a personal question or refuses to explain why she wants Markie to help a neighbor with a particular task, Markie feels justified in keeping her distance. But is she really? Together, the so-called defectives, who include a little girl, her troubled mother and grandmother, an elderly handyman, and an absent-minded cook, seem to form a functioning community of helpful neighbors who look out for Mrs. Saint as well as she looks out for them. Where Markie fits into the neighborhood is the question of the story, and its answer is thoughtful and bittersweet.
Ultimately, Mrs. Saint turns her neighbor’s guilt trip into an uplifting journey to interdependence—one that will leave readers ready to move next door.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4778-1996-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
