A crackling narrative that starts strong and ends abruptly.
A single mom and her 11-year-old daughter, who are trying to start over, move to a small New England town, but it’s harder to leave their pasts behind than they thought.
Sherri Griffin has just moved to Newburyport, Massachusetts, with her daughter, Katie, and has somehow gotten her a spot in one of the more coveted summer surf day camps, much to the surprise of the long-term town moms. The first day of camp marks the beginning of Sherri's and Katie’s individual efforts to make new friends and redefine themselves—Sherri among the Mom Squad, aka The Group, which rules the social scene among the rising sixth grade parents in their little town, and Katie among those moms’ daughters. Author Moore offers a relatively standard narrative structure of rotating between a number of main characters’ points of view to tell the story. In addition to Sherri and her murky past, there is Rebecca Coleman, a second grade teacher on summer break who is struggling with grief over the sudden death of her husband 18 months before, guilt over her desire to make new friends and start dating, and irritation at her old friends; and Alexa Thornhill, Rebecca’s 17-year-old daughter, who is planning for her post–high school future on her terms and not those of her mother. Refreshingly, however, Moore also employs a breezy style to share the gossipy feel of the groupthink of the Mom Squad as an additional point of view. This is a book that tiptoes between genres. Is it a mystery? A thriller? A teen coming-of-age exegesis? A beach read that leans into a potential romantic fairy-tale ending? Surprisingly, the story elements that successfully create narrative tension and draw the reader through the volume are discarded at the close. Instead, the reader is given an ending that is as capricious as life itself.
A crackling narrative that starts strong and ends abruptly.Pub Date: May 26, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-284009-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A quiet and poignant debut from a writer to watch.
An Indigenous family is forever changed after one of their own goes missing.
Peters’ debut novel explores the lives of a Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia as they grapple with their decades-old trauma. In 1962, Ruthie, the family’s youngest daughter, goes missing from the berry farm in Maine where they work every summer. Told from alternating perspectives, the novel follows Joe, Ruthie’s older brother and the last person to see her before she went missing, and Norma, a young girl living in Maine with an aloof father and overbearing mother. Lying on his deathbed, Joe thinks back on his life, which has been filled with grief, rage, and all-consuming guilt: “People have given me their time, their love, their bodies, their secrets. And I’ve given so little.” After a brutal act of violence, Joe spent the next few decades running from himself and his sins, so as not to inflict more harm onto the ones he loves the most. Meanwhile, Norma recounts her life, which was plagued by a different kind of guilt, one that caused her to always be the dutiful daughter—the daughter who didn’t ask too many questions, ignored the lack of baby pictures, and chose to forget the vivid and painful dreams that plagued her childhood (“Each time I woke, I grieved for the woman cloaked in darkness and I tried to call out to her”). Eventually, Norma goes to college, becomes a teacher, and falls in love—and she spends the next few decades finding a way to live with the unsettling feeling that something isn’t quite right with her life. As Norma’s true identity is barely concealed, the novel is less concerned with maintaining a mystery than with exploring how brutality ripples out, touching everything and everyone in its wake. Peters beautifully explores loss, grief, hope, and the invisible tether that keeps families intact even when they are ripped apart.
A quiet and poignant debut from a writer to watch.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9781646221950
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
An impressive literary balancing act that entertains as it enriches.
A hefty political page-turner about what it means to have money and how we fall in love with it.
Tarkington begins his pungent political drama with an epigraph from Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, announcing his lofty intentions before the novel proper has even begun. By turns sprawling and intimate, the book looks at the blessing and curse of Southern noblesse oblige through the eyes of those who have and those who don’t. Arch Creigh got his leg up from a new-money uncle, and he sees his future in the realm of Republican politics in his native Nashville. His boyhood friend, also the story’s narrator, is Charlie Boykin, a conscientious poor kid with a young, pretty mom and only a few scruples about accepting a helping hand. Tarkington is a gifted storyteller, largely because he knows how to let his finely developed characters do the heavy lifting. Money isn’t all that separates the novel’s nouveau riche from its reluctant strivers. There’s also the matter of idealism, always an iffy prospect in politics; and authenticity, which grows elusive as fine living and friends in high places seduce and destroy what lies in their paths. Charlie, who didn’t grow up with money, essentially falls in love with what and whom it represents, including Arch’s wife, Vanessa. Tarkington weaves in some scandal—an affair, an abortion, and enough secrets to keep readers guessing. But he’s not just prompting the next page turn. The novel is concerned with what lies beneath both the best intentions and worst impulses. There’s a tantalizingly thin line between love and desire here. Mistaking one for the other is easy. It’s also catastrophic.
An impressive literary balancing act that entertains as it enriches.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-61620-680-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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