by Juliet Grames ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 23, 2024
Stronger on atmosphere than plot and narrative focus.
An idealistic American gets educated about Italian realities in a remote Calabrian village.
Francesca Loftfield is 27, “a bluestocking with big dreams for building a better world, one needy child at a time,” when she arrives in Santa Chionia in 1960 to open a nursery school for an international charity. She has fled a disintegrating marriage, alluding to it intermittently before she finally explains how it came apart to Cicca Casile, her grumpy landlady. Cicca warns Francesca that it’s dangerous to search for the identity of the skeleton uncovered beneath the rubble of the post office, which was destroyed in a flood that also wiped out the single bridge connecting the village to the outside world. But Francesca’s curiosity is piqued when not one but two women claim the skeleton belongs to a loved one who allegedly emigrated to America but was actually killed by “them.” As Francesca delves into the stories of Leo Romeo and Mico Scordo, she faces increasing hostility from town authorities and eventually realizes there’s a lot going on in Santa Chionia that she doesn’t understand. Complicating matters is the arrival of Ugo, a handsome village boy who is home from his job in Milan to help with his dying father and openly taken with the American visitor. The tangled plot becomes more so when Francesca decides there’s a third possible identity for that skeleton, and the final revelations would be more compelling if she were a more engaging narrator. The amount of time she spends agonizing over her not-yet-ex-husband becomes irritating, as does her cluelessness about a major character she continues to trust long after readers have seen multiple glaring clues that he’s in on all the dirty deeds. Despite some wonderfully rendered portraits of individual villagers and vivid descriptions of the Calabrian landscape, the novel never quite clicks.
Stronger on atmosphere than plot and narrative focus.Pub Date: July 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536179
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
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by Elin Hilderbrand & Shelby Cunningham ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 2025
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
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Our Verdict
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New York Times Bestseller
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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SEEN & HEARD
by Ken Follett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 23, 2025
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
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New York Times Bestseller
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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