An engaging and topical tale of politics and journalistic ethics with a feminist slant.
A successful journalist with a dark secret mentors an ambitious young reporter in this debut novel.
After an embarrassing career misstep and ugly breakup, 25-year-old Megan Barnes flees New York City and heads back home to the Chicago suburbs for a fresh start. But life in the Windy City isn’t without its complications. Her mother is running for Congress as a Republican, much to the dismay of her left-leaning daughter, and the single job interview Megan lands is a bust. At a rally against sexual assault, she tussles with an angry misogynist, capturing the attention of her personal hero, Jocelyn Jones, an icon of journalism “right up there with Diane Sawyer, Christiane Amanpour, and Leslie Stahl.” Soon, Megan has been hired to assist with PR for Jocelyn’s upcoming memoir, with the promise of a glowing recommendation and referral to an editor at the Chicago Tribune once the job is done. But when an anonymous Twitter user starts hinting about a scandal in Jocelyn’s past, the devoted Megan discovers there’s more to her idol than it appears. In her book, Smith spins a brisk, engrossing tale about an idealistic, occasionally naïve woman who finds her neat assumptions about the world challenged by a messy reality. Megan’s relationship with her overprotective, conservative mother is believably fraught, and her desire to find a strong female role model in Jocelyn is palpable. The author tackles weighty topics, including abortion and the right/left political divide, with grace and finesse. Despite their differences, Megan and her mother are ultimately able to find a common ground. Meanwhile, Jocelyn’s liberal bona fides can’t hide her rotten core. While the idea that a few vague tweets would prompt a full-blown “crisis which could damage” Jocelyn’s reputation and prompt a “horde of reporters” to camp out on her doorstep seems a stretch, Smith manages to sell it. Ultimately, Megan learns an important lesson for anyone, journalist or not: There’s a danger in making judgments based on feelings rather than cold, hard facts.
An engaging and topical tale of politics and journalistic ethics with a feminist slant.Pub Date: March 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64538-262-1
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Ten16 Press
Review Posted Online: July 9, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Though Hilderbrand threatens to kill all our darlings with this last laugh, her acknowledgments say it’s just “for now.”
A stranger comes to town, and a beloved storyteller plays this creative-writing standby for all it’s worth.
Hilderbrand fans, a vast and devoted legion, will remember Blond Sharon, the notorious island gossip. In what is purportedly the last of the Nantucket novels, Blond Sharon decides to pursue her lifelong dream of fiction writing. In the collective opinion of the island—aka the “cobblestone telegraph”—she’s qualified. “Well, we think, she’s certainly demonstrated her keen interest in other people’s stories, the seedier and more salacious, the better.” Blond Sharon’s first assignment in her online creative writing class is to create a two-person character study, and Hilderbrand has her write up the two who arrive on the ferry in an opening scene of the book, using the same descriptors Hilderbrand has. Amusingly, the class is totally unimpressed. “‘I found it predictable,’ Willow said. ‘Like maybe Sharon used ChatGPT with the prompt “Write a character study about two women getting off the ferry, one prep and one punk.”’” Blond Sharon abandons these characters, but Hilderbrand thankfully does not. They are Kacy Kapenash, daughter of retiring police chief Ed Kapenash (the other swan song referred to by the title), and her new friend Coco Coyle, who has given up her bartending job in the Virgin Islands to become a “personal concierge” for the other strangers-who-have-come-to-town. These are the Richardsons, Bull and Leslee, a wild and wealthy couple who have purchased a $22 million beachfront property and plan to take Nantucket by storm. As the book opens, their house has burned down during an end-of-summer party on their yacht, and Coco is missing, feared both responsible for the fire and dead. Though it’s the last weekend of his tenure, Chief Ed refuses to let the incoming chief, Zara Washington, take this one over. The investigation goes forward in parallel with a review of the summer’s intrigues, love affairs, and festivities. Whatever else you can say about Leslee Richardson, she knows how to throw a party, and Hilderbrand is just the writer to design her invitations, menus, themes, playlists, and outfits. And that hot tub!
Though Hilderbrand threatens to kill all our darlings with this last laugh, her acknowledgments say it’s just “for now.”Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9780316258876
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
