An enjoyable, if uncomplicated, beach read about a novice journalist during wartime.
In this novel, a young woman scores a job as a reporter for a Westchester County newspaper in the waning days of World War II.
The war in Europe has ended, but fighting on the Pacific front is in full force. That is where Marty Gregg’s fiance, Eddy, is stationed, and she hasn’t received a letter from him in several weeks. Meanwhile, with all the young men off to war, Marty has been hired as a reporter for the Port Chester Sentinel. Worrying about Eddy, she finally dozes off to sleep. Suddenly, she is jolted out of bed by the piercing wail of a siren. The Rye, New York, shipyard, which has been producing landing barges for the war effort, is ablaze. With the enthusiasm of a fledgling Lois Lane, Marty rushes to the shipyard. Unfortunately, Ben Bronson, a newbie reporter just out of high school assigned to the Greenwich, Connecticut, desk, has already been to the scene even though Rye is Marty’s territory. Now she must convince her editor, Phil Barrett, to assign her the story. Phil is already disgruntled over having to hire women to fill jobs usually held by men. Over dinner at an Italian restaurant, Phil agrees to let her run with the write-up, but the playboy bachelor has a more nefarious interest in Marty. This is the first adult novel by Tolles, a children’s book author. Tolles’ prose has a vintage charm reminiscent of the era, but it lacks the sophistication of adult fiction. Marty narrates the tale with an innocence and simplicity that are quaint by today’s standards. Despite Phil’s numerous sexual advances, she is slow to fully grasp his intentions. Describing a dinner with him, she says: “We didn’t get off to a good start. ‘Hi, Marty,’ he said when we met and he hugged me right up close. Oh, not good.” Still, the author skillfully evokes the atmospherics of America’s homefront wartime mentality. She introduces a bit of humor when Marty dresses as a man to access the Plains Club for an FBI briefing on the shipyard explosion. And the hunt for the arsonist keeps the narrative engaging.
An enjoyable, if uncomplicated, beach read about a novice journalist during wartime.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62815-915-8
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Speaking Volumes
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.
A vampire and an Alpha werewolf enter into a marriage of convenience in order to ease tensions between their species.
As the only daughter of a prominent Vampyre councilman, Misery Lark has grown accustomed to playing the role that’s demanded of her—and now, her father is ordering her to be part of yet another truce agreement. In an effort to maintain goodwill between the Vampyres and their longtime nemeses the Weres, Misery must wed their Alpha, Lowe Moreland. But it turns out that Misery has her own motivations for agreeing to this political marriage, including finding answers about what happened to her best friend, who went missing after setting up a meeting in Were territory. Isolated from her kind and surrounded on all sides by the enemy after the wedding, Misery refuses to let herself forget about her real mission. It doesn’t matter that Lowe is one of the most confounding and intense people she’s ever met, or that the connection building between them doesn’t feel like one born entirely of convenience. There’s also the possibility that Lowe may already have a Were mate of his own, but in spite of their biological differences, they may turn out to be the missing piece in each other’s lives. While this is Hazelwood’s first paranormal romance, and the book does lean on some hallmark tropes of the genre, the contemporary setting lends itself to the author’s trademark humor and makes the political plot more easily digestible. Misery and Lowe’s slow-burn romance is appealing enough that readers will readily devour every moment between them and hunger to return to them whenever the story diverts from their scenes together.
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780593550403
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as told from the perspective of a more resourceful and contemplative Jim than the one you remember.
This isn’t the first novel to reimagine Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, but the audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey, shifting the central viewpoint from that of the unschooled, often credulous, but basically good-hearted Huck to the more enigmatic and heroic Jim, the Black slave with whom the boy escapes via raft on the Mississippi River. As in the original, the threat of Jim’s being sold “down the river” and separated from his wife and daughter compels him to run away while figuring out what to do next. He's soon joined by Huck, who has faked his own death to get away from an abusive father, ramping up Jim’s panic. “Huck was supposedly murdered and I’d just run away,” Jim thinks. “Who did I think they would suspect of the heinous crime?” That Jim can, as he puts it, “[do] the math” on his predicament suggests how different Everett’s version is from Twain’s. First and foremost, there's the matter of the Black dialect Twain used to depict the speech of Jim and other Black characters—which, for many contemporary readers, hinders their enjoyment of his novel. In Everett’s telling, the dialect is a put-on, a manner of concealment, and a tactic for survival. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” Jim explains. He also discloses that, in violation of custom and law, he learned to read the books in Judge Thatcher’s library, including Voltaire and John Locke, both of whom, in dreams and delirium, Jim finds himself debating about human rights and his own humanity. With and without Huck, Jim undergoes dangerous tribulations and hairbreadth escapes in an antebellum wilderness that’s much grimmer and bloodier than Twain’s. There’s also a revelation toward the end that, however stunning to devoted readers of the original, makes perfect sense.
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780385550369
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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