A well-crafted tale of two women eking out new identities in Hong Kong.
Two women, separated by time, grapple with love and family in this historical novel.
Li Mingyu has preferred to use her American name, Patricia Findlay, ever since she married her husband, Andrew. Though born in Hong Kong, Patricia has spent most of her life in the United States and has lost much of her Cantonese. Now, in 2016, she and Andrew have left their American lives behind—including Patricia’s successful career in finance—and moved to Hong Kong in order to be closer to her parents and her native culture. But the transition has proved more difficult than Patricia anticipated, not least because her father, a powerful Chinese banker, is demanding that she give him an heir to inherit the family business even though she and Andrew have had difficulty conceiving. Intercut with Patricia’s story is that of Isabel Taylor, who moves to Hong Kong with her admiral husband, Henry, in 1912. There, she reconnects with Li Tao-Kai, also known as Teddy, a man she met a decade earlier when he was a university student attending a dinner at her family’s home. She finds herself drawn to Teddy, who moves effortlessly between worlds, but how close will she allow herself to get? As the two stories unfold one century apart, two women in a bustling city are caught between the demands of family and those of the heart. What’s more, their tales are more closely intertwined than they first appear to be. Tod’s observant prose captures Hong Kong, past and present, in evocative detail. Here, Patricia examines photographs from Isabel’s time period: “The contrast between those photos and the Hong Kong of today was remarkable. No glamorous high-rises or ultra-modern skyscrapers. No high-end stores offering designer brands. No smartly dressed women on their way to work. No red taxies or Porsches or Jaguars. She imagined the sounds and smells would also have been different.” The parallel narrative structure is a familiar one, but the author employs it well, slowly introducing elements that bind the two timelines together. Isabel’s story is perhaps more intriguing, but Patricia is a richly imagined character whose contemporary predicaments are illuminated via her investigations into the past.
A well-crafted tale of two women eking out new identities in Hong Kong.Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-9919670-7-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Heath Street Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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