by Kate Kasten ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 23, 2017
A well-crafted university story that speaks to the human spirit.
In this novel, a veteran teacher faces ethical boundaries as she invests in the academic and personal lives of her students.
Jane Frost has been teaching in the English as a Second Language program at McBee University in Iowa for more than 20 years. This tale primarily examines the triumphs and struggles of the international students enrolled in Jane’s ESL Low Intermediate Grammar/Writing class. Jane goes above and beyond to teach her students the intricacies of English so they can pass the Test of English as a Foreign Language exam in order to move on and enroll in American universities. She encourages her students of varying ages and cultural backgrounds to come together and find rapport. In particular, Jane takes an interest in her two Japanese students for very different reasons: Chika Yamamoto, an uninterested young woman with flunking grades, and 60-something Yumi Murata, an affable, hardworking woman and stellar student with some secrets of her own. When the usually gleeful Yumi begins withdrawing and her grades start to slip, Jane tussles with getting involved; in the past, she has been chastised by Kaye Bibber, the program director, for her liberal boundaries when it comes to the affairs of her students. Additionally, Jane is challenged by her new mentee, first-year teacher Donna Bittner, whose provocative clothing and odd, lackadaisical teaching style rattle McBee’s ESL department. In this finely constructed novel, Kasten (Wildwood, 2013, etc.) deftly focuses on Jane’s lessons, including teachings and conversations in class about dialogue, diction, grammar, and idioms of American vernacular. But the “twist” at the end of the tale is abrupt; a more thorough explanation would have been helpful. Jane is a strong character but she would have benefited from a more in-depth back story. Although there are a few anecdotes about her childhood memories and brief mentions of siblings, Jane also fleetingly alludes to her raucous time in the 1960s and her early adulthood “living communally and holding up hostile signs in front of certain corporate headquarters and military installations.” Fully explored, this would have added a nice layer to the narrative.
A well-crafted university story that speaks to the human spirit.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Robinne Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 13, 2017
A fascinating, thought-provoking, genre-bending romantic read.
When Solène Marchand takes her 12-year-old daughter to a concert by the hottest boy band on the planet, she doesn't expect to fall in love with one of the singers.
Middle-aged art gallery owner Solène hasn’t dated since her divorce, but when her ex-husband buys their daughter and a group of her friends tickets to Vegas and a backstage concert experience, then backs out at the last minute, she steps in as escort. The five guys in the wildly popular English boy band August Moon appeal to women of all ages, but Hayes, the brains behind the group’s success, flirts with Solène at the concert meet and greet, invites them to a party after the show, then pursues her once she gets back to Los Angeles. He’s only 20 and he’s incredibly famous; his attention is flattering and heady. The two fall into an affair that’s supposed to be light and easy, but before long they can’t ignore their intense emotional attachment. Solène is hesitant to tell her daughter, but when she procrastinates, Isabelle learns about it through an online tabloid, which damages their relationship and leaves Solène open to censure from her ex. Then, once the affair goes viral, she experiences the darker side of Hayes’ fan base. What started out as a jaunty adventure turns into an emotionally fraught journey, and Solène must decide what she’s willing to risk for her happiness and what she won’t risk for her daughter’s. Actress Lee, who appeared in Fifty Shades Darker, debuts with a beautifully written novel that explores sex, love, romance, and fantasy in moving, insightful ways while also examining a woman’s struggle with aging and sexism, with a nod at the tension between celebrity and privacy.
A fascinating, thought-provoking, genre-bending romantic read.Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-12590-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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