Ignore the junk science and enjoy the pleasing conceit that ends with a genuinely surprising twist.
Rose’s U.S. debut employs a lightning strike to relocate her heroine in another woman’s body.
Strolling with her terrier near her flat in Epsom Downs, 28-year-old Jessica Taylor is instantly drawn to fellow dog walker Dan Brennan. Seconds later, she’s hit by a thunderbolt of a different kind, and revives at the hospital in the flesh of Lauren Richardson, wife of orthodontist Grant and mother of four. Jessica is even more bewildered when Lauren’s body goes to sleep and Jessica finds herself in another hospital, greeted by her own name. Both women, she learns, were struck by lightning at approximately the same time several miles apart, but while Jessica’s injuries were minor, Lauren’s heart stopped and it took doctors 40 minutes to resuscitate her. Her consciousness appears to have vanished, leaving Jessica’s to alternately occupy two bodies. When Lauren sleeps, Jessica wakes up back in her own life; night for Lauren becomes day for Jessica and vice versa. (Confused yet? The bizarre logistics somehow read plausibly.) As Lauren, Jessica quickly discovers all was not well in the affluent Richardson household. Her two daughters and twin boys, including learning-disabled Teddy, were consigned to various nannies and led strictly regimented lives; the old Lauren was a fastidious fashionista. Horrified by Grant’s increasingly menacing amorous overtures, Jessica/Lauren learns that Lauren is about to put Teddy in an institution and leave with her lover. (The lover, baffled by the change in plan, begins stalking her.) She finds herself growing attached to the children, who in turn appreciate their “new” mummy’s child-friendly household: She allows fries for lunch, a sandbox, playground equipment, a rabbit and a guinea pig. Meanwhile, back in her own life, Jessica realizes Dan is “the one.” But how can she tell him about her other identity, particularly when his late mother suffered from multiple-personality disorder?
Ignore the junk science and enjoy the pleasing conceit that ends with a genuinely surprising twist.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-34399-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2009
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
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
© Copyright 2026 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.
