A sensual set of character studies, shaped by compassion and defiance.
A group of teen mothers gathers in solidarity.
Mottley’s second novel, following Nightcrawling (2022), concerns the Girls, a clique of young women in the coastal town of Padua Beach, Florida, united by their teen pregnancies and active contempt for the families, schools, and other social structures that seek to diminish them. The story alternates among three narrators, starting with leader Simone, who in a vivid opening scene describes chewing off her umbilical cord in the bed of a pickup truck for lack of a knife. (Well, a clean one—her partner’s dingy blade, like most of the men in this story, doesn’t measure up.) The second narrator, Adela, an aspiring Olympic swimmer until her pregnancy, has been shipped by her family to Padua Beach until she gives birth. The third, Emory, has an infant son, Kai, whom she insists on bringing to high school during her senior year, determined to go to college. Each in their own way claps back against their critics, hyperalert to how they’re diminished: “You wouldn’t believe what happens when a girl these days gets knocked up,” Emory says. “Suddenly, it’s the most important thing about you…You are nothing but a young mother.” Mottley’s lyrical prose and spirited characters are meant to be a counterweight to such reductionism, and there are fine set pieces throughout: bonding over breastfeeding methods, selling “jungle juice” to spring breakers for extra funds, a harrowing homebrew abortion that’s forced by hyperrestrictive state legislation. The plot can get soap opera–ish—Simone’s brother, Jayden, is the father of Emory’s child, and romantic squabbles abound. At times, Mottley’s prose gets overheated: “They don’t tell you in first aid training about the way blood works, about the thump and swirl of red hot beneath the skin and what happens when it runs drought dry.” But the ferocity of her characters gets over, letting an aggressively misunderstood group speak for itself.
A sensual set of character studies, shaped by compassion and defiance.Pub Date: June 24, 2025
ISBN: 9780593801123
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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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