White (Sea Change, 2012, etc.) re-polishes her 2003 publication to good effect. This charming romance brims with appealing...
By the light of a crescent moon, Suzanne Paris spies through her bus window a opossum. Her eyes riveted, she wonders if the creature, like her, will simply wait for the next catastrophe. Or could she, for once, stop hiding.
Abruptly, Suzanne gets off the Atlanta-bound bus to find herself in Walton, Ga. There’s no better place to hide than this rural town. No one, not even her frightening ex-fiance, will find her here. Yet, everyone she meets wants to know where she’s from and where she got the unusual charm around her neck. Walton turns out to be populated with warm characters who have no intention of letting her slip under the radar. There’s Miss Lena, who seems to recognize Suzanne, even though Suzanne’s rough childhood, bouncing between foster homes and an alcoholic mother, never brought her to Walton. There’s Lucinda, who seems to recognize Suzanne’s wariness and hires her to help with her lingerie store. Most importantly, there’s Joe, Lucinda’s widowed nephew-in-law. Father of six, high school teacher, football coach, incumbent mayor—Joe seems impossibly good. A woman with secrets, Suzanne seems like a walking bad decision. Luckily, Joe’s eldest daughter, Maddie, begins to connect the two destined lovers. Like Suzanne, Maddie lost her mother at 14 and has a talent for photography. Soon, Suzanne is tutoring Maddie, baby-sitting Joe’s younger kids and becoming inextricably woven into the fabric of his life. Enter the villain: Stinky Harden, Joe’s competition in the mayoral race and Suzanne’s nemesis as he determines to discover her secret and use it to discredit Joe. Soon, Suzanne’s past threatens her future, and only love—and some rather wicked trickery—can save the day.
White (Sea Change, 2012, etc.) re-polishes her 2003 publication to good effect. This charming romance brims with appealing characters and captivating phrasing.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-451-23968-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: NAL Accent/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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