Not the prescription for what ails the modern reader.
Love triangle among three overachieving schoolmates.
Matthew, Ben and Amelia were best of friends during graduate school, until ambition and passion took hold and scattered them in different directions. Amelia and Matthew pair off romantically and set up house in Pennsylvania. Matthew opts to skip practicing medicine and instead chases the buck, accepting a job as junior executive at a huge drug company. Amelia, a philosophy major and journalist, becomes a harsh critic of Big Pharma, and she attacks Matthew at every turn for joining what she feels is an evil empire. As for Ben, he drifts into the background: The brilliant doctor throws himself into clinical research and finding cures for global epidemics. When the ethical chasm between Matthew and Amelia becomes too vast, the two end their relationship. Now it’s Ben’s turn to hook up with Amelia. Amelia hopes that Ben is a man capable of meeting her lofty ethical standards. The trio is thrown back together when a small boy named Cobain (he prefers Danny) wanders into Matthew’s apartment. Danny desperately needs help to get his drug-addicted mother cleaned up and his neglected little sister proper medical care. Matthew is far too obsessed with his career to assist Danny. But when Matthew sees an opportunity to hurt Amelia and salvage a brewing PR disaster at his company, he agrees to support Danny and his sister. But he’ll need some help from his old friends. As Matthew jets around the globe defending his company’s actions, the children’s plight brings the trio even closer. Tucker’s latest (Once Upon a Day, 2006, etc.) offers plenty of modern moral dilemmas but little in the way of remarkable innovations. The novel is strongest when taking on the gray area of bioethics: Matthew’s ability to rationalize his actions makes for the most engaging episodes. However, Tucker ultimately neglects these substantive issues, favoring a tearjerker ending and a sappy romance.
Not the prescription for what ails the modern reader.Pub Date: April 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7434-9279-9
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2008
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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