A wonderfully spun yarn with an unforgettable narrator.
In Whitehorse’s novel, a woman’s eyes are opened to the secrets of her one-of-a-kind lover.
When readers first hear about Charles Madison Montgomery Washington, he’s just a boy living with his sex worker mother, with his only examples of manliness being his mother’s many clients—any one of whom could be Charles’ biological father. However, Charles isn’t the focus of the story; that’s narrator Sweetie Bird Charles, whose unique manner of address—a sort of patois of literary Southern drawl, coastal slang, and general linguistic laziness—is sure to dazzle readers from the outset (“I know a thing or two about slick-talkin’ folks,” she begins). Sweetie met Charles in adulthood and became one of his lovers, and not long into their affair, he began moving furniture and appliances into her home. Soon after, though, Charles told Sweetie he was going away on business, and he’d be gone nearly a year. Not to worry, he said—he’ll return from this “conference” with a slew of new contacts in his field. Sweetie’s still not sure what field that is, but she finds out when Charles’ 20-year-old associate, Dick E.—his getaway driver—spills the beans. Dick is there to case the joint, but he doesn’t get far because Sweetie’s wise now, and after she sends him packing, she immediately proceeds to tear apart Charles’ belongings, hoping to unearth every long-held criminal secret. This is the point at which Sweetie’s, and the reader’s, true enlightenment begins, as both find out just what kind of guy Charles is. Over the course of this novel, Whitehorse sketches out Sweetie as a character who’s equal parts Huckleberry Finn and Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird; she’s a rare character who’s simultaneously intelligent and ignorant, and readers will surely find her sober renderings of the lies people tell to be appealing, whether those falsehoods are big or small. Sweetie’s unique narrative voice will make readers follow her anywhere, but there’s also plenty of plot to make sticking around easy.
A wonderfully spun yarn with an unforgettable narrator.Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9798891321076
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2025 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.
