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Let Me Fall

An involving tale of love and redemption that will satisfy discerning fans of the new-adult genre.

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New-adult fiction about a dyslexic high school football star and the only girl who understands him.

In the fifth installment of her Let Me series, Foster (Let Me Heal Your Heart, 2015, etc.) introduces Carolyn Harris, a motivated and competent high schooler who has her entire future mapped out. She is a stellar student, a self-declared science nerd, and the kindest member of her perpetually back-stabbing group of friends. She is also dating Drew Oliver, the alpha male of the senior class. Unfortunately, Carolyn is much more interested in Jeremy Rivers, the bad boy who returns to her high school after many years at a school for students with learning disabilities. Carolyn is nervous but secretly delighted when she is asked by the school counselor to tutor Jeremy. They grow close, and Carolyn realizes that she cares more deeply for Jeremy than Drew. After she dumps Drew, Jeremy and Carolyn can be together, much to the reader’s delight. As soon as it seems they couldn’t possibly be happier, however, a whirlwind of disastrous events occurs. A secret from Carolyn’s past emerges, and Drew commits a violent act that upends everyone’s lives. Carolyn’s affluent suburban community suddenly shuns her, and her long-term life plans begin unraveling. She pushes Jeremy away, determining herself unworthy of his love. The novel toggles between Carolyn’s and Jeremy’s alternating perspectives, allowing the reader to understand their motivations for their often counterproductive actions. With her character-driven plot and fast-moving storyline, Foster easily keeps readers engaged. Although the ending isn’t surprising, the journey toward that resolution is fraught with unexpected twists. Foster’s prose is easygoing and readable, but she still tackles weighty issues in this romantic story, ranging from bullying and sex shaming to mental illness and living with learning disabilities.    

An involving tale of love and redemption that will satisfy discerning fans of the new-adult genre.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2017

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 320

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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  • New York Times Bestseller

Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Pub Date: June 16, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

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THE NIGHTINGALE

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

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