A dark and complex exploration of the vagaries of parental and romantic love.
In a letter to the chosen mother of her newborn child, a woman with a rare disorder looks back at her lifetime search for love after the early loss of her father and her wild last year.
In Daviau’s second novel, Nina Simone Blaine addresses Dr. Tabitha Chen, who diagnosed Nina with A12 Fibrillin Deficiency Syndrome when Nina was 11 years old, and whom Nina has chosen to be the adoptive mother of the newborn she calls Sigrid Alma. Forty years and six weeks old, Nina expects to die within hours of giving birth to the child she never expected to have. Like “Marfan on steroids,” A12 endows its carriers—most of them the children of men older than 60—with missing fingers, bulging eyes, loose skin, crooked bodies, troubled hearts, and early deaths. For Nina, A12 meant rejection by her mother, Tracy, a former beauty queen who took her second husband’s side rather than her daughter’s in a sexual assault court case; when she was a girl, only Nina’s father, Eddie Blaine, who died when she was 7, called her beautiful. Once known as Sandy Blattner, Eddie gave up crooning on the Catskills circuit to attempt stardom in Hollywood and left behind a few mostly forgotten albums and Nina’s memory of his love. Seeking affection as devoted as her father’s sends Nina from her home in Connecticut back to Los Angeles and into the arms of Cole Courchaine, one of the “Good Thumbs,” a small circle of people with A12 supporting each other through their last days. Cole is grandiose, manipulative, and violent; given his grotesquely abusive behavior, Nina’s entanglement with him can be hard to take. The novel’s conclusion is both celebratory and satisfying in its ambiguities, as most of its large cast of characters are revealed to be complicated, capable of a flawed kind of love, and, with few exceptions, also somewhat mean.
A dark and complex exploration of the vagaries of parental and romantic love.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781959000624
Page Count: 272
Publisher: West Virginia Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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