A heartfelt but awkwardly executed tale of supernatural revenge.
In McLaughlin’s novel set in the 16th century, a girl must take matters into her own hands when she’s caught up in a murderous conspiracy.
In 1500s Scotland, as more and more women are being accused of witchcraft, 12-year-old Amaranth’s parents are brutally murdered. She’s sent to live at the nunnery that owns her father’s land, but before she moves in, Amaranth visits her home one last time. An ancient, powerful witch intercepts her, gives her a vial of her own powerful blood, and tells her to mix their bloods together under a full moon to unlock supernatural powers: “Amaranth, beware, the world is a cold place. First, it takes your soul and then, when you are least ready, your body! But you need not be a victim of this misery if you live as a supernatural.” Amaranth, bemused and overwhelmed, hides the vial near her parents’ graves. At the nunnery, she befriends Lady Janet Douglas, a noble trying to fight against unjust witchcraft charges; Amaranth studies law in her late teens and becomes a legal advocate to help Lady Janet defend women caught up in the government’s unjust campaign. Meanwhile, she investigates her uncle Michael, who seems to be involved the government’s work, and who possibly had a role in her parents’ deaths. Eventually, tragedy strikes, and Amaranth uses the vial of blood in a transformational bid to enact revenge. Amaranth is an appealing hero, and McLaughlin’s care for her shines through. Many of the secondary characters, including Lady Janet, are also well-drawn, and readers will enjoy rooting for them. Overall, the author delivers a tale that’s packed with ideas, especially about witchcraft panics of centuries past. However, these themes don’t always get enough room to breathe. More details about the real-life historical aspects of the setting would have been welcome, as it’s not always easy to tell when elements are anachronistic. The heightened prose style sometimes verges into melodrama, and often the narration explicitly states what something means or how a character feels, even when it’s obvious from context.
A heartfelt but awkwardly executed tale of supernatural revenge.Pub Date: June 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781038320476
Page Count: -
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
This luxurious novel is set to take the world by storm.
The true story of Axis diplomats detained in the U.S. at the start of World War II is transformed into a dazzling historical novel set at a sumptuous West Virginia hotel.
Bestselling YA fantasy author Stiefvater’s adult debut introduces a writer whose prodigious imagination and distinctive prose style have combined to create a novel that will remind readers of why they fell in love with reading in the first place. At its center is the captivating June Hudson, an erstwhile Appalachian orphan who was taken in by the wealthy Gilfoyle family, owners of the Avallon Hotel & Spa, a high-society retreat built over underground mineral springs. At his death, the patriarch bequeathed ownership to his playboy son, Edgar, but made June the general manager, as she had spent her life learning the business—and also shared with Gilfoyle Sr. a rare gift relating to the “sweetwater” springs, a fantastical element of this otherwise realistic novel. Aside from the magical waters and a few other fanciful details, Stiefvater’s fictional world is based on extensive research into high-end hotels of the period, creating a version of luxury so appealing that readers will wish they could check into the Avallon and stay on indefinitely. In fact, the novel revolves around the true meaning of luxury. To June, it has nothing to do with wealth; it is more connected to joy, and to the book’s title: “June had long ago discovered that most people were bad listeners; they thought listening was synonymous with hearing. But the spoken was only half a conversation. True needs, wants, fears, and hopes hid not in the words that were said, but in the ones that weren’t, and all these formed the core of luxury.” Also brilliantly managed is the rest of the ensemble cast: sexy FBI agents; June’s inimitable staff; the delegations of Japanese, Germans, and Italians detained at the hotel, some quite nasty, but among them a strange, special, totally silent child. And on top of all this, a delicious love story!
This luxurious novel is set to take the world by storm.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780593655504
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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