An engrossing story of finding happiness in unexpected places for those who enjoy offbeat romances.
A trip to Scotland and an unexpected inheritance throw lives into disarray in McConnell’s novel.
Jenna Hamilton is unhappy both in her career and her marriage. One day she receives a fateful call from the lawyer of Lady Madeleine MacDonald. As it turns out, Jenna has inherited the Lady’s estate at Glenfraoch in the Scottish Highlands, which feels a million miles from Jenna’s home in Missouri. To her, Lady MacDonald was simply “Maddie,” her childhood best friend. Upon her arrival in Inverness, Jenna is surprised by the offer of a lift from Quinn MacGregor, a man she almost had an affair with 12 years earlier when they were witnesses at Maddie’s wedding. Quinn takes her to Glenfraoch, where Jenna finds herself in the middle of a small Scottish community of quirky supporting characters as well as on a slightly predictable course of a will-they, won’t-they romance with Quinn himself, which at times is overextended. The author, however, adds spice to the story with a few unique supernatural aspects. Jenna reveals that Maddie once believed in magic and spells. She loved horses and hoped she might return to Earth as one after her death; what follows is an adventure for Jenna and Quinn in which, to honor Maddie’s memory, they gather unique ingredients to perform a spell for her during an upcoming eclipse. It is a refreshingly eclectic storyline that primarily focuses on Jenna’s dealing with her Scottish inheritance and deciding whether to pursue her heart’s desire with Quinn. McConnell’s vivid descriptions of the lush Scottish setting are sure to dazzle readers: The depiction of Jenna’s surroundings, Maddie’s estate, and the excursions taken by Jenna are immersive and beautiful, making establishment of place one of the high points in this oddly intriguing novel. The author also does an admirable job of examining the enduring nature of a friendship “forged by the fire of adolescent pain and strengthened by time” and the processing of grief.
An engrossing story of finding happiness in unexpected places for those who enjoy offbeat romances.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 395
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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