McCleary’s richly drawn characters face intriguing challenges, yet the tale lacks momentum.
Georgia and Alice have seen each other through the tribulations of marriage and motherhood, becoming the best of friends, but can their relationship survive the deepest betrayal?
McCleary’s (A Simple Thing, 2012, etc.) novel opens with Georgia Bing abandoning her newborn son in the hospital. The events leading to that act are told in multiple flashbacks, alternating between Alice’s and Georgia’s perspectives, a strategy that unfortunately slows the action to a sluggish pace. A successful baker, Georgia is happily married to John, a brilliant chef, whose smoldering eyes caught her attention at first glance. Raised by a vivacious but neglectful single mom, Alice found love and security with Duncan, a lawyer who recently quit his posh partnership to work for a nonprofit. Desperate for a second child, Georgia has tried every fertility treatment. Alice is keenly aware of the sad irony that Georgia, a woman so perfect for motherhood that she could be a baby whisperer, cannot conceive. After learning that Georgia’s younger sister is pregnant and cannot donate an egg, Alice offers Georgia her own eggs, a gift that sets a course for joy and heartbreak. Meanwhile, Alice’s and Georgia’s teenage daughters are embroiled in a bullying incident, which Duncan does not worry about and Georgia (with her high-risk pregnancy) should not worry about. So, Alice begins to navigate the murky waters of teenage drama, and she finds herself confiding in a man who offers a sympathetic ear. Supportive conversations lead to irresistible attraction. Soon, Alice has put everything in jeopardy, and she can’t even turn to Georgia for help. Nor can Georgia turn to Alice when she discovers something that challenges her ability to love the child she tried so hard to conceive.
McCleary’s richly drawn characters face intriguing challenges, yet the tale lacks momentum.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210626-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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