A well-balanced blend of action and romance.
A man and woman struggling with the ghosts of their pasts find an unexpected connection in Regnery’s (By Proxy, 2013, etc.) romantic thriller.
San Franciscan Brynn Cadogan’s loving fiance, Jeremiah “Jem” Benton, is murdered just before their wedding day. Paralyzed by grief, Brynn spends two years in self-imposed isolation from family and friends. Meanwhile, in the shadow of Maine’s Mount Katahdin, a man named Cassidy Porter lives off the grid in a cabin built by his grandfather. When Cassidy was 8, his father, Paul Isaac Porter, was arrested for murdering 12 girls. Ostracized by the community, the boy and his mother retreated to the cabin, where he now lives a solitary life. As Jem’s birthday approaches, Brynn discovers that just before his death, he started to send her a text about Mount Katahdin. Determined to pay tribute to her late fiance, she travels to Maine to bury his cell phone on the mountain. There, Brynn is brutally attacked by an unknown man. Cassidy rescues her, takes her to his cabin, and nurses her back to health. Brynn soon falls in love with Cassidy, but he fears that he could someday turn into a killer like his father; he wants to protect her, if it means saying goodbye to her forever. Regnery’s latest novel offers appealing main characters and a satisfying, tightly constructed narrative. The chapters alternate between Brynn’s and Cassidy’s first-person points of view, which allows Regnery to illustrate how each of their life experiences has left them feeling alone. It also offers moments of deep introspection, especially early on, when a conversation with Jem’s twin sister, Hope, forces Brynn to consider moving on with her own life. Cassidy is similarly well-drawn, as he deals with his legacy as the son of a notorious killer. Brynn and Cassidy’s relationship develops at a steady pace as they bond over their shared love of movies and reading. The descriptions of the Mount Katahdin setting are vivid and bracing: “And so I set forth again…climbing through brambles and over rotting logs as the rain beats down upon my bare head, bathing me in heaven’s tears.”
A well-balanced blend of action and romance.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-944810-19-1
Page Count: 370
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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