Readers who stick around for the reveal will be rewarded with a tale about two women’s secrets that’s both entertaining and...
Old friends reminisce about their emotional high school years in this debut novel about acceptance.
Margaret MacGregor Monahan is happily married in Northern California, with kids, a husband, and her best friend, AnneMarie Calzaretta, nearby. What she can’t tell Anne is that her family may have to move to Minnesota, a secret Margaret keeps even as she prepares to host her friend’s wedding in her backyard. The two pals go way back, their adolescence documented in Margaret’s many diaries. When Anne asks to read the diaries, Margaret brings them out and recalls the beginning of high school. Summer camp brought summer romance, and her best confidante was Jennifer Cone, a sweet Mormon girl. In Margaret’s memories, high school is filled with mean girls, pep rallies, and flirtatious boys. But when teenage Anne comes to her with a secret, young Margaret struggles to respond as a friend, and as a religious person. In the present, the two women realize they’re each holding something back: Margaret confesses that she’s moving, and Anne reveals that she hasn’t been honest at work. As the two friends continue to prepare for Anne’s wedding, Margaret’s remembrances reveal that her friendship with Jennifer is indicative of something worrisome. The truth will bring Margaret and Anne closer, as teenagers and as the women they’ve grown up to be. It takes a while for this tale to warm up to its main characters, but once young Anne tells Margaret her secret, the stakes are raised and a compelling and uplifting story is revealed. The narration alternates between the drama of their high school years, and the bond of their friendship as adults, although the school portions sometimes drag (the Homecoming festivities take up nearly four chapters). Pop-culture references are frequent enough that the book could come with its own soundtrack of Van Halen tunes and modern Flo Rida songs. What could plateau as a predictable coming-of-age story takes an interesting turn when the truth about Jennifer is revealed, elevating First’s novel from a bunch of sentimental recollections to an absorbing read.
Readers who stick around for the reveal will be rewarded with a tale about two women’s secrets that’s both entertaining and surprisingly touching.Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-940716-97-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Spark Press
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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