An uneasy, riveting glimpse at life in the shadows, anchored by a compelling main character.
A young woman struggling with mental illness joins a colony of subterranean outcasts beneath Las Vegas.
Voices, hallucinations, and paranoia haunt Suzie Franks, a first-year college student in Portland, Oregon, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a child. She struggles with bouts of delusion and causes outbursts on campus. When confrontations with other students escalate, she’s given an ultimatum: Take medication or risk expulsion. Suzie, afraid of the drug’s side effects, which include weight gain, refuses to take it and slowly alienates her friends and supporters before disappearing entirely. She winds up on a bus to Las Vegas after meandering around the country—turning away from her supportive boyfriend and mother in the process—and she joins a clan of people who live in the flood channels beneath the city. The tension builds in the novel’s second half, with the terrifying “Wonderman,” who leverages power, drugs, and influence to control the other tunnel dwellers, serving as an ongoing danger. Another looming threat is a bad rainstorm, which could wash everyone away and which forces Suzie to either face her past or risk drowning. Despite all her flaws, Suzie is so likable that her ongoing struggles are harrowing to watch. Landt gives readers a clear sense of what life is like for Suzie, whose oppressive, imagined voices are clearly rendered. The structure of the novel doesn’t entirely work, however. The most involving section—the lead’s descent into mental illness and underground living—could have come earlier in the novel. Much of Suzie’s prior life, before running away to Las Vegas, is less interesting and gets undue attention. Also, pivotal relationships are left unexplored until the novel’s denouement. Still, Suzie’s is a unique, absorbing tale, full of drama and memorable scenes.
An uneasy, riveting glimpse at life in the shadows, anchored by a compelling main character.Pub Date: June 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798223653110
Page Count: -
Publisher: Ryland Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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