A light novel in which women take charge of their own happily-ever-afters.
Marrying young seems romantic to four young Louisiana friends, but their Prince Charmings turn out to have clay feet.
Quitting high school was easy for Laura. After all, it meant marrying her sweetheart, Brian, and following him to LSU, the next step in his promising football career. But a knee injury sends them back home to Toulouse, hoping to save money for Brian’s surgery. Working as a waitress and living with Brian’s parents strains Laura's marriage, but she seizes the chance to finish her high school degree. After Brian begins hitting the bottle and squanders six months’ savings, however, Laura begins to wonder if she should have followed her own dreams instead. Gabby also thought she’d found her dream man: Tony is smart, attentive, supportive, and wealthy. Unfortunately, Gabby has spun a web of lies about herself, but who can blame her for glossing over her mother’s incarceration for embezzlement? Their impending wedding pushes Gabby to tell the truth, but will Tony forgive her? Striving to pay for her father’s cancer treatments, Madison is torn between her infatuation with bad-boy musician Cash and her realization that stable, kind, wealthy George might be the answer to her prayers. Can she sacrifice her passion in order to support her family? Of the four, Claire may have hit the jackpot with her minister husband. That is, until she spots his car outside the local strip club. Can she reignite their passion? Does she want to? Pennell’s debut novel shimmers with lively banter and the glitter of these young women’s dreams. By shifting perspectives and ending each chapter with an emotional cliffhanger, Pennell escalates the tension, making each woman’s tribulations intensify her friends’ troubles, as well.
A light novel in which women take charge of their own happily-ever-afters.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-3646-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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