An emotionally satisfying story of two college students finding love amid chaos.
A sequel offers an ongoing melodrama set on a university campus.
Poole’s (Don’t Let Me Fall, 2013) new novel in her Village series brings back several characters from her earlier installment, notably college sophomore Ciara Capers, a smart and emotionally brave young woman returning to Aurbor Grove University after her adventures in the first book. AGU star quarterback Xander Oliver reappears as well. A sensitive “preacher’s kid,” Xander tries not to become ensnared in the typical partying ways of college (he remembers his religious upbringing often, with its calls for “a clean head, a clean heart, and clean hands”). Ciara rooms with her best friend, Faraji, and an archly competitive young woman named Brooklyn, with whom she often clashes. Mixed into this tense combination are romantic entanglements: Ciara’s clingy ex-boyfriend Trey continues to show up on her cellphone, for instance (“It’s a never-ending saga with him,” she tells Brooklyn. “Every time he calls or texts me, I have to relive all my mistakes”). And while Faraji’s boyfriend, Nick, provides her with a steady source of emotional support, he also delivers some complications, since he and Ciara earlier had a brief fling they’ve decided to keep a secret from Faraji. In steady and well-controlled dramatic advancements, Poole shapes the events of her story to bring Ciara and Xander closer together despite the schemes of Brooklyn and the boorish antics of Xander’s squad mates. Most memorably, the author creates a richly believable atmosphere of college life—the parties, the academic pressures, the swings between tedium and debauchery, the struggles of students to forge their own identities as they move into adulthood, the emotional baggage of ex-lovers and new attachments, etc. (Poole also refreshingly works in an element of real-world, old-fashioned financial concerns, an aspect usually left out of campus fiction.) The action of the book takes place independently from its predecessor, although the two novels are best read in sequence; together, they present a warmly convincing tale of 21st-century university life.
An emotionally satisfying story of two college students finding love amid chaos.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9910708-1-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Jack of All Trades Media LLC
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
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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