A look at betrayal and forgiveness that nicely balances humor and depth.
A journalist and single mom unexpectedly connects with her ex-husband’s new wife and begins a duplicitous friendship.
Liz, a journalist in her late 40s, has built a pretty amazing life out of the ashes her husband created years ago when he left her for another woman. She’s moved on with her life, becoming the editor of a national newspaper column called “My Turn,” in which regular people share their touching and hilarious personal stories. She has a healthy social life, goes on lots of dates, and maintains a close relationship with her college student son. On the outside, everything looks great…but secretly, Liz’s life is a bit messy. She’s sleeping with her married boss, Seamus, despite the fact that she still can’t quite get over how her own husband betrayed her in a similar fashion. And then one day, she gets a “My Turn” submission from a familiar name—it’s Nicole Szabo, otherwise known as her ex’s current wife and the reason Liz’s family was torn apart. Without revealing her identity, Liz corresponds with Nicole, making editorial changes while also slyly finding out details about Nicole’s marriage (and even offering some advice). Liz knows that what she’s doing with Nicole and Seamus is wrong, and she tries to fix things by buying tons of self-help books with titles like Forgiveness Is a Gift You Give Yourself. But books alone can’t solve her problems, and Liz’s inability to open up to the people in her life makes her push everyone away—including friends, potential romantic prospects, and her son. When Liz reaches a breaking point, can she truly put the past behind her so she can focus on the life in front of her? Ashenburg writes candidly about a complex character who’s allowed to screw up in big ways. Liz is never shamed for wanting love, sex, or companionship, although she often goes about it the wrong way. None of the characters are written off as easy “bad guys,” not even Liz’s ex-husband or his new wife. Many of Liz’s misadventures on her journey are comically cringeworthy, such as a visit to a “cuddle party” or the dates with a poet who won’t stop talking about his bowels.
A look at betrayal and forgiveness that nicely balances humor and depth.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-308-444-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
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