by Mary Ellen Taylor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 25, 2018
Pass on this one even if you like the shore.
Lucy Kincaid, a Nashville bar manager who wanted to go to art school, brings her mother’s ashes and German shepherd, Dolly Parton, to a town on the Virginia shore she’d never heard of until recently.
Just before Beth died of brain cancer, she told Lucy she had just inherited "some property" in Virginia, which would now be Lucy's. Lucy didn't know her mother had ever been to Virginia and wonders what the secrecy is about. The property turns out to be Winter Cottage, a mansion on hundreds of acres. Taylor (The View from Prince Street, 2016, etc.) takes more than 350 pages to tell readers what they can see coming in the first 30. Lucy meets Hank Garrison, a lawyer who's handling the inheritance and who, coincidentally, will inherit Winter Cottage himself if she chooses not to move in. Within a very short time, Lucy comes to decisions about the house; Hank; a 12-year-old named Natasha who needs a stable home; and her previously unknown father. There are inconsistencies beyond the way Lucy settles in so quickly after Taylor portrays her as too “restless” to stick around. For example, Lucy explores the attic and notes a trunk she can’t open without a key. Dozens of pages later she's back in the attic, where she and Natasha open the trunk just by pressing a button on the lock. Lucy and Natasha also watch videos Beth made of interviews with Winter Cottage’s last matriarch, Catherine Hedrick Buchanan, the woman who left Beth the house. Multiple storylines from past and present are rushed or never quite conclude, such as the identity of human bones found near Winter Cottage and the events that have driven Hank to want to “put everything on the line to bring this town back.” Lines such as “She finished up her eggs and dumped what remained of the veggies in the trash before washing the plate and setting it in the drying rack” are unnecessary to the story. Rather than allowing the action in a scene to illuminate characters' feelings, Taylor tells readers how to view her characters’ emotions, such as “Vulnerability and sadness drained the energy from Natasha.”
Pass on this one even if you like the shore.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5039-0388-3
Page Count: 371
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2018
A tour de force.
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New York Times Bestseller
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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