A warmhearted portrait of love embracing true hearts.
The Sweeney sisters gather in Southport, Connecticut, for the funeral of their father, Bill Sweeney, a brilliant writer. An unexpected guest at his wake, however, will shift the foundations of their lives.
Not yet lucky in love, all three sisters have nonetheless landed on their feet. Liza, the eldest, has lived a safe, comfortable life in her hometown, married to boring Whit Jones after Gray Cunningham broke her heart. But she’s created a successful career with her Sweeney Jones Gallery, selling work by local artisans, including Maggie, the middle Sweeney daughter, who has put years of wild living behind her. Tricia, the youngest, ended up in New York City, working for a prestigious law firm after her graduation from Yale. When their father’s lawyer reveals that a newly discovered half sister may lay claim to part of Bill’s estate, the sisters realize that the woman at the funeral was no stranger. In fact, she was their childhood neighbor Serena Tucker, whose mother turns out to have had an affair with Bill, which Serena learned about after having taken a DNA test. Dolan (Elizabeth the First Wife, 2013, etc.) uses her experience in podcasting with her own sisters (Satellite Sisters and The Chaos Chronicles) to craft believable women characters who worry about real problems and use wry humor to push through dark moments. Faced with irrefutable DNA evidence, the sisters gently remind each other not to blame Serena, yet they brim with questions: Why did Bill pair up with Birdie Tucker, Serena’s stiff, country-club fixture of a mother? Was their parents’ marriage troubled? And why didn’t Serena come forward sooner? Is she hoping to cash in on her famous father’s death? Or is she going to put her journalism career to work and write a tell-all memoir? Struggling to remember her own childhood from a new perspective, Serena is anxious about fitting in with the tight trio of redheads. As the sisters get to know each other, they begin to restructure their family to include not only each other, but also new partners.
A warmhearted portrait of love embracing true hearts.Pub Date: April 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-290904-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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