The fifth volume in Riley’s (The Pearl Sister, 2018, etc.) series about adopted sisters named after the Pleiades.
Pa Salt, the late adoptive father of the six D’Aplièse sisters, left instructions for each daughter to track her origins to distant lands, thereby providing material for a thick novel about each. This installment concerns Taygete, aka Tiggy, who is an animal whisperer and wildlife conservation expert. Tiggy has been putting off her Pa-dictated origin quest; however, while employed as a wildcat wrangler on Kinnaird, a Scottish estate, she meets Chilly, an elderly Romani man who, it turns out, is a distant cousin. His directive, to travel to Spain, aligns with Pa Salt’s. Following the formula laid out in earlier novels, large swathes of flashback cover the stories of Tiggy’s gitano ancestors, the Albaycíns, following them from 1912 through the post–World War II era. Inhabitants of the Sacromonte district in Granada, Tiggy’s forebears are musicians and flamenco dancers. A few are healers and clairvoyants, proclivities which Chilly will, years later, spot in Tiggy. Her great-grandmother, the long-suffering María, and María’s lothario husband, José, though dwelling in caves, bring up daughter Lucía to become a world-famous flamenco star. The challenges facing the gitanos, an oppressed minority living on the margins of payo, or non-Romani, Spanish culture, are exhaustively detailed, as are the intricacies of flamenco as a dance form. The flight of Lucía and her family during the Spanish Civil War adds tension, as does Lucía’s all-consuming narcissism. As is typical, so far, of this series, the ancestor story overwhelms the present narrative, which here mostly involves Tiggy’s difficulties with men: Zed, a billionaire guest at Kinnaird, is a sexual harasser, and the unhappily married Charlie, Kinnaird’s laird, is not only dangerously attractive, but attracted to Tiggy. Zed has history with three other D’Aplièse sisters and may know more than he lets on about Pa Salt’s fate. The three narrative threads—this novel’s present and past and the linkages affecting the series—turn the book into a doorstop, but Riley fans will not be deterred.
An absorbing drama replete with decades-spanning lessons in girl power.Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9821-1061-1
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
Categories: FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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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. 6, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Categories: GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | SUSPENSE
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Sixty years after her first love failed to meet her in a market square, Roya Khanom Archer finally has the chance to see him. But will he break her heart again?
Back in 1953, she was a 17-year-old schoolgirl, raised in a progressive home in Tehran, where her father encouraged Roya and her sister, Zari, to take advantage of the recent reforms that allowed women to go to university. While he hoped she might become a chemist, Roya loved escaping into novels, which sent her to Mr. Fakhri’s stationery and book store every Tuesday afternoon. There she first sees Bahman Aslan, a breathless young man already well-known as a political activist. Kamali (Together Tea, 2013) sets Roya and Bahman’s love against the tumultuous days of Mohammad Mossadegh’s rise and fall as prime minister of Iran, infusing their affair with political passion and an increasingly frantic sense of the shortness of time. Tuesday after Tuesday, the couple falls more deeply in love, and Bahman soon proposes marriage to Roya. While Roya’s family welcomes Bahman—although Zari warns Roya that his heart cannot be trusted—Bahman’s emotionally volatile mother refuses to accept the engagement, because she has already chosen Shahla, the daughter of a man closely allied with the shah, for her son. Roya determines to weather her future mother-in-law’s storms, but when Bahman and his family disappear, she can only turn to Mr. Fakhri for help. Although he cannot tell Roya where Bahman has gone, Mr. Fakhri offers to exchange secret letters between the lovers. The plan works, and the two even plan to elope, but Bahman does not show up in Sepah Square. Sixty years later, Bahman’s confession will finally expose the secrets that cast shadows over the lovers so long ago.
A sweeping romantic tale of thwarted love.Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9821-0748-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
Categories: FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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