by Katie Runde ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 10, 2022
Runde’s family story is sweet, sad, and surprising.
A summer at the shore turns real for a family experiencing loss and love at the same time.
Margot and Brian Dunne, who’ve been married forever and are the parents of teenagers Liz and Evy, run a chain of rental houses in Seaside, on the Jersey shore. Former teachers, the couple worked their way up from modest circumstances and lead a life many would consider ideal. Brian’s tortuous descent into anger and oblivion—the agonizing results of a growing brain tumor—marks the course of an emotionally tumultuous summer for the family. Margot shoulders the burden of operating the family business with help from Liz and Evy, who are also continuing their own work: passing from adolescence to adulthood (with the attendant insecurity and heartache that process brings). While maintaining a united front to the outside world, the three women deal with familial misunderstandings and secrets, all now freighted with added urgency in light of Brian’s decline. Margot shares her fears and plans on an online forum, unaware that her internet-savvy girls are, maybe, one step ahead of her there. Liz and Evy don’t know what they don’t know about their parents’ relationship over the years despite internet and household sleuthing. Runde’s sympathetic portrait of a family in crisis is not without humor and insight: The brigade of well-meaning friends and neighbors who support the family with a never-ending supply of IDCs (Inevitable Death Casseroles) is just one finely drawn target here. An epigraph from Springsteen’s “Born to Run” places Runde’s account of abandonment, loneliness, and recovery firmly on the Jersey shore and among its yearning populace.
Runde’s family story is sweet, sad, and surprising.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982180-17-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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by Tana French ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
An absorbing crime yarn.
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A divorced American detective tries to blend into rural Ireland in this sequel to The Searcher (2020).
In fictional Ardnakelty, on Ireland’s west coast, lives retired American cop Cal Hooper, who busies himself repairing furniture with 15-year-old Theresa “Trey” Reddy and fervently wishes to be boring. Then into town pops Trey’s long-gone, good-for-nothing dad, Johnny, all smiles and charm. Much to her distaste, he says he wants to reclaim his fatherly role. In fact, he’s on the run from a criminal for a debt he can’t repay, and he has a cockamamie scheme to persuade local townsfolk that there might be gold in the nearby mountain with a vein that might run through some of their properties. (What, no leprechauns?) “It’s not sheep shite you’ll be smelling in a few months’ time, man,” he tells a farmer. “It’s champagne and caviar.” Some people have fun fantasizing about sudden riches, but they know better. Johnny’s pursuer, Cillian Rushborough, comes to town, and Johnny tries to convince him he could get rich by purchasing people’s land. Alas, someone bashes Rushborough’s brains in, and now there’s a murder mystery. The plot is a bit of a stretch, but the characters and their relationships work well. Trey detests Johnny for not being in her life, and now that he’s back, she neither wants nor needs him. She gets on much better with Cal. Still, she’s a testy teenager when she thinks someone is not treating her like an adult. Cal is aware of this, and he’s careful how he talks to her. Johnny, not so much: “I swear to fuck, women are only put on this earth to wreck our fuckin’ heads,” he whines about Trey’s mother, briefly forgetting he’s talking to Trey. The book abounds in local color and lively dialogue.
An absorbing crime yarn.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780593493434
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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