Riley’s exhaustive, and occasionally exhausting, research is on full display here.
In the fourth of Riley’s Seven Sisters series, another of the D’Aplièse daughters discovers her true heritage.
After her sister Star finds herself, Celaeno, aka CeCe, whose career as a painter has stalled, is free to follow the directive left by her late adoptive father, Pa Salt. (Series readers will recall that Pa Salt, a shipping magnate, adopted seven girls as infants, naming them after stars in the Pleiades constellation.) CeCe is instructed to research Kitty Mercer, who lived in Broome, a northwestern Australian town renowned for its pearl fishing industry. After a romantic interlude with an eccentric Bangkok billionaire, CeCe arrives in Australia, where additional clues lead her to the town of Alice Springs and its surrounding desert, the Never Never. There, while discovering her artistic heritage through aboriginal paintings, she learns of a mixed-race man who may be her grandfather. CeCe’s story meshes with sections devoted to Kitty, beginning in 1906. The daughter of a philandering minister, she journeys from Scotland to Australia, where she marries into a German-Australian pearling family, the Mercers, setting up household in Broome with husband Andrew. She gives birth to son Charlie after providing shelter to an aboriginal girl, Camira, and her infant, called Alkina (Moon) but nicknamed Cat for her large amber eyes. Cat and Charlie grow up together and become inseparable. When Charlie reaches adulthood, his determination to wed Cat once more upends Kitty’s destiny. Kitty’s tangled history and its equally snarled connections to CeCe’s origins unravel at a leisurely pace, with much lore about pearl fishing, aboriginal culture, and Australian race relations adding interest.
Riley’s exhaustive, and occasionally exhausting, research is on full display here.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-8003-3
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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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