A somber but meritorious tale that profoundly examines a subject affecting adolescents and adults alike.
A 16-year-old girl’s sudden disappearance gradually exposes grim secrets in this YA novel.
When Jenna Kemp goes missing, her friends and family are understandably shocked. But more unfortunate surprises quickly come to light. The Wisconsin teenager had been a straight-A student, but in the weeks prior to her vanishing, she was so troubled she turned to drugs and drinking. Jenna’s mother, Bonnie, learns that her daughter had no longer been hanging out with longtime friends Keeley Simon and Delaney Burns. Jenna had likewise split with her boyfriend, Dustin Bock, and seemingly confided only in Leighton Pierce, the new girl in school. But there are things about Jenna even Keeley and Delaney don’t know, which ties to the disturbing diary entry of Jenna’s that Bonnie read, a violation of privacy that impaired the mother-daughter relationship. Something dark from the teen’s past had recently resurfaced and ultimately led to her change. While cops investigating Jenna’s disappearance have their eyes on a person of interest, Keeley, Delaney, and Leighton peruse the teen’s diaries dating back several years. They hope to find evidence of what happened to her in the past, something the girls already suspect and that may lead to Jenna’s current whereabouts. It won’t take long for readers to decipher Jenna’s traumatic event, though Farnham (A Case of Serendipity, 2018, etc.) doesn’t try to keep it a mystery. Nevertheless, the teen’s fate is unknown until the end, which helps the story retain tension for its entirety. The author achieves this with a potent nonlinear narrative that oscillates predominantly between two time periods: the months and weeks before Jenna vanishes and days after she’s gone. Farnham masterfully dramatizes the serious subject matter; Jenna is a victim who’s alternately withdrawn and combative, and she remains sympathetic throughout. The prose reflects the story’s frequent gloominess. Believing she could have done more to help her friend, Keeley broods: “I swallow the guilt that’s creeping up my throat, ready to choke me.”
A somber but meritorious tale that profoundly examines a subject affecting adolescents and adults alike.Pub Date: April 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73228-322-0
Page Count: 358
Publisher: K. J. Farnham Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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