by L.A. Villafane ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A gripping tale about the reverberations of spousal abuse.
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In this debut novel, a California woman who’s escaped a controlling, abusive husband relives her past life when she was still under his thumb.
In 2019, Gloria Davis speeds down the highway, inexplicably covered in blood. She has suffered memory lapses for years and can’t remember what led to her current predicament. After apparently blacking out, Gloria awakens next to her ex-husband, Charles, instead of her fiance, Rick Gaines. Later determining it’s somehow 2003, she’s once again living with the indifferent man who psychologically abused her. The narrative alternates between this time period and 2017, when Gloria finally decides to leave Charles and eventually meets Rick. Gloria considers 2003 a “do-over” and takes the opportunity to get out of her marriage even earlier. Charles is irate in both time periods and occasionally shows up drunk at Gloria’s home. She’s happy to be away from Charles but soon realizes that, if she stays in 2003, she’ll have to find another way to connect with Rick. Meanwhile, the protagonist, whom a psychologist has diagnosed with dissociative disorder, knows “the Other Gloria” has taken over during those lapses in memory. She suspects the unsettling dreams she’s having in 2003, in which she’s locked inside a box, may actually be memories. Villafane has written a riveting story about domestic abuse. Although there are later indications that Charles’ abuse has been physical, his cold, domineering nature is unnerving on its own. Even after Gloria moves out, Charles is a frightening individual who bangs on her door late at night. Benevolent characters help alleviate the story’s overall bleakness; good-guy Rick is the focus, but Gloria also gets support from her parents and, in 2017, her teen daughters, Chrissy and Sarah. The author skillfully distinguishes the two time periods, using past tense for 2017 and present tense for the 2003 that Gloria is reliving. Villafane’s largely unadorned prose soberly depicts a woman who struggles to put herself and her daughters first and stop catering to the needs of a self-serving husband.
A gripping tale about the reverberations of spousal abuse.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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PROFILES
by Robinne Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 13, 2017
A fascinating, thought-provoking, genre-bending romantic read.
When Solène Marchand takes her 12-year-old daughter to a concert by the hottest boy band on the planet, she doesn't expect to fall in love with one of the singers.
Middle-aged art gallery owner Solène hasn’t dated since her divorce, but when her ex-husband buys their daughter and a group of her friends tickets to Vegas and a backstage concert experience, then backs out at the last minute, she steps in as escort. The five guys in the wildly popular English boy band August Moon appeal to women of all ages, but Hayes, the brains behind the group’s success, flirts with Solène at the concert meet and greet, invites them to a party after the show, then pursues her once she gets back to Los Angeles. He’s only 20 and he’s incredibly famous; his attention is flattering and heady. The two fall into an affair that’s supposed to be light and easy, but before long they can’t ignore their intense emotional attachment. Solène is hesitant to tell her daughter, but when she procrastinates, Isabelle learns about it through an online tabloid, which damages their relationship and leaves Solène open to censure from her ex. Then, once the affair goes viral, she experiences the darker side of Hayes’ fan base. What started out as a jaunty adventure turns into an emotionally fraught journey, and Solène must decide what she’s willing to risk for her happiness and what she won’t risk for her daughter’s. Actress Lee, who appeared in Fifty Shades Darker, debuts with a beautifully written novel that explores sex, love, romance, and fantasy in moving, insightful ways while also examining a woman’s struggle with aging and sexism, with a nod at the tension between celebrity and privacy.
A fascinating, thought-provoking, genre-bending romantic read.Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-12590-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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