Romance with a side of poignant family dynamics and a large, intriguing cast.
A second-chance romance inaugurates a new Regency series about a family torn apart by lies and healed by love.
Devlin Ware, Viscount Mountford, is the favored heir of a beloved aristocratic family. At his family's annual ball, he has just been granted the love of Gwyneth Rhys, the neighbor he has longed for all his life, and is preparing to approach her father for her hand when he discovers his father in a compromising position with a woman who must be his mistress. In indignation, Devlin tells his father to send the woman away, loud enough for many of their guests to hear—a performance that gets him banished from Ravenswood Hall, his idyllic home. The first part of the novel shows a perfect world that collapses, a bit implausibly, into heartbreak and separation; the second charts the exile’s return from active duty in the Napoleonic wars after his father's death and the unexpected way Gwyneth reknits their bond while Devlin learns that righteous morality, duty, love, and forgiveness need not be mutually exclusive. Some readers may view the primary romance as being consigned to a subplot while a lot of space is spent on a meticulous word-picture of the family seat and portraits of the many secondary characters who will take the lead in later books. But readers who appreciate Balogh’s skill at linking her characters’ inner lives, surroundings, and social ties will find many pleasures here. Themes from previous series reappear: Those who rooted for the head of the Bedwyn family will see echoes in the older Devlin’s frostiness, with the added bonus of the character’s point of view; fans of the Survivors’ Club series may sympathize with his experiences in the army; readers who liked the Huxtable family’s resilience in the aftermath of its patriarch’s bigamy will enjoy this twist on a similar problem; and those who remember the author’s Welsh romances will welcome Gwyneth and her family for returning us to Balogh’s roots. There is one off note: In an apparent bid to criticize fat-phobia, one character’s body is repeatedly mentioned in fat-phobic terms.
Romance with a side of poignant family dynamics and a large, intriguing cast.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-43812-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
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
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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