A bold reengagement with the novel’s time-tested staple subject: romantic love.
A 20-something Brooklynite remakes the form and function of love in this story told in rhyming couplets.
The speaker of this novel in verse is, at first, enviably settled in her life. She enjoys her job teaching composition; she loves her boyfriend; she feels “if not exactly pride, at least the pretty, / riskless pleasure of conformity.” Then she meets an electrifying woman who sweeps her into a tumultuous, explosively erotic relationship. Through a series of discrete stanzas, themselves portioned into rhyming couplets, the speaker narrates the dissolution of her relationship with her boyfriend and the charged early months of her new love affair, which vivifies all the quotidian objects of her life even as it plunges her into sincere mourning for all that was lost in the breakup with the man she “revered / but felt [she] had been failing many years.” The author’s formal choices underscore the thematic obsessions of the book. The rhyming couplets create conversations within themselves, each line echoing the other’s language in sonic duets reminiscent of the ways couples reflect each other’s identities. The conceit is clever, and the verse itself is full of startling, effervescent imagery—not to mention full-throated eroticism—that is a pleasure to read. However, the only fully realized character in this tightly controlled exploration of identity and desire is the speaker herself. Perhaps this is the result of the form, which reflects the boyfriend and the lover as elements of the speaker’s own voice; perhaps it is a more deliberate flattening, illustrating the speaker’s statement that “love / has been, above all things, the engine of / self-knowledge in my life.” Regardless, the relentless interiority restricts the reader’s engagement to only those things that illustrate the speaker’s blooming selfhood. All other characters become symbols of the speaker’s progress through her journey of self-realization rather than people in their own rights. Which leaves the reader to ask how much more real or nuanced our narrator could have seemed if the characters that accompany her transformation were afforded the same ability to look into their own mirrors.
A bold reengagement with the novel’s time-tested staple subject: romantic love.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780374607951
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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