by Kevin E. Ready ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2020
An oddly quotidian tale built around a fantastic premise.
A man dies and becomes reborn as a troubled teenage girl in this literary novel.
In an attempt to avoid arrest for possession, 18-year-old Naomi Donnelly swallowed an entire bag of drugs. Now she’s been in a coma for months with no sign of improvement. Army veteran Mark Kelleher is rushing to a Tinder date when he’s involved in a terrible accident on the highway. Before he can escape the wrecked vehicle, he is engulfed in the resulting flames. He wakes up in a hospital bed screaming about a fire—but he’s no longer in his own body. Instead, he has somehow inhabited the body of Naomi Donnelly: “It was Naomi’s slim hands that lifted up to feel her face and grab a strand of hair to inspect. Yes, long blonde hair, kind of dirty and oily, it seems to have some gooey stuff in it. What has happened to me? Am I still Mark? Or, have I become someone else? Am I crazy?” He decides that, because Mark died in the fire, he must live as Naomi. The new Naomi discusses the issue with her psychotherapist, Dr. Partridge, who believes her story and helps her get released from the mental health facility in which she’s being kept. Partridge also finds her a place to live in the home of the Morrisons, a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints couple who recently lost their daughter in a drunken driving accident. Naomi decides to enroll in a local college and become a nurse. While working as a nursing intern, she meets Jesse Manzanares, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan and a SWAT member who was shot in the line of duty. The two fall for each other, but their relationship is strained when Naomi decides to enlist as a nurse in the Army Reserve. Like Mark and Jesse before her, Naomi is called to serve in Afghanistan. Throughout her experiences, Naomi runs into strange coincidences that have to do with Mark—but what will she do with this second chance at life?
Ready’s prose is lucid and straightforward, as here where he describes Naomi’s new outfit: “Part of her first paycheck from Kentfield Farms had gone downtown to the big western wear emporium. The jeans were standard skinny-leg, boot-cut women’s jeans, but they had plenty of decorative shiny rivets and rhinestones down the leg seams and on the pockets.” While the premise may sound familiar, this novel is no body-switching comedy. In fact, Mark largely disappears from the story after the first act, subsumed into the much more powerful (if memoryless) Naomi. Nor does the book deal with the issue of switched gender. Rather, the tale—which seems long at over 350 pages—is primarily about Naomi’s development from patient to nursing student to Army nurse. The plot moves slowly, and the characters, for all the time readers spend with them, are disappointingly flat except for Naomi. What’s more, the narrative’s themes—life cycles, growth, learning from mistakes—are somewhat vague and confused. It ends up being a rather sentimental story, though not one that will stir many deep feelings in readers.
An oddly quotidian tale built around a fantastic premise.Pub Date: June 1, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Saint Gardens Press
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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