A circuitous but sensitive novel from an author to watch.
Domestic worlds collide when an 11-year-old evacuated from England to the United States during World War II is absorbed into a new family, reconfiguring both its equilibrium and her own.
Spence-Ash’s debut takes a multiperspective approach to one minor wartime decision that impacts multiple lives across time and place—from the 1940s to the 1970s in London, Boston, and on a magical island off the coast of Maine. The last is where the Gregory family spends each summer, as Beatrix Thompson will learn to do too, during the five years, from 1940 to '45, she spends with the Gregorys: parents Ethan and Nancy, sons William and Gerald. Back in Blitz-stricken London, her parents, Reginald and Millie, miss Bea intensely and argue about the wisdom of Reginald’s insistence on her departure. Reginald is a factory worker with “no money in savings at all,” while the Gregorys are “house-rich and dollar poor,” Ethan employed as a teacher. The class divide is just one element to which Beatrix must adapt, but as the daughter Nancy always wanted and a treasured companion to both boys, her new role develops into a positive, enlarging experience for all parties in America. After the war and Beatrix’s return to England, her relationship with the Gregorys begins to drift. And, with the novel's decade-spanning timeline and episodic structure, so does Spence-Ash’s plot momentum. Postwar relationships, children, and deaths occur, accompanied by glimpses of tenderness and connection, but there’s also a hollow restlessness to the narrative, compounded by the sketchiness of some characters, including a major one who disappears without much impact. It’s the women who emerge most vividly from this delicate yet porous story that eventually yields to a predictable conclusion.
A circuitous but sensitive novel from an author to watch.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9781250854377
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
A steamy, romantic summer read with a charming setting.
A florist attempts to avoid her best friend’s brother—and their powerful chemistry—on Prince Edward Island.
When Lucy Ashby visits her best friend Bridget’s family home on Prince Edward Island for the first time, Bridget gives her three rules: Eat your weight in oysters….Leave the city behind. And, most importantly, Don’t fall in love with my brother. Unfortunately for Lucy, she sleeps with Felix basically the second her plane lands, unaware that he’s Bridget’s brother until it’s too late. Lucy has never felt understood or accepted by her immediate family, and Bridget is one of the very few people she allows into her inner circle, so Lucy’s desperate to abide by these rules. And so she and Felix try to avoid each other on every one of Lucy’s visits to PEI over the years. And, of course, they fail spectacularly, always returning to each other when they’re in between relationships. But it’s never been anything serious…Lucy makes sure of that, backing off whenever her emotions feel too strong. In her “real life” back in Toronto, it’s easier for Lucy to avoid thinking of Felix as she runs a busy floral shop, working herself into the ground. But when Bridget asks Lucy to come to PEI for an emergency girls’ trip less than two weeks before Bridget is supposed to get married, Lucy drops everything to be there for her best friend. She doesn’t expect to find Felix there, along with feelings that are stronger and more difficult than ever to ignore. Even more than jeopardizing her relationship with Bridget, Lucy is afraid that giving in to her feelings could ruin the life she’s worked so hard to build. Fortune, the author of hits like Every Summer After (2022), gives readers another refreshingly summery story full of angst, romance, and sex scenes aplenty. The PEI setting is a beautiful backdrop for Lucy and Felix’s secret hookups and Lucy’s journey of self-discovery as she learns how to stand on her own two feet as a business owner, friend, and daughter. In addition to frequent (and welcome) Anne of Green Gables references, there are oysters galore and many sandy, windy scenes that transport readers straight to the island.
A steamy, romantic summer read with a charming setting.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9780593638880
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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