An artful blend of history and romance.
In Penttila’s (A Note of Scandal, 2013, etc.) Regency romance, a young woman struggles to reconcile a tragic past and an uncertain future in a city on the brink of revolt.
Madeline Wetherby is no stranger to hardship. Daughter of an English viscount, she was orphaned as a toddler, rescued from an abusive uncle, and sent away by her godfather, the Earl of Shaftsbury. She’s educated on all things estate related and is promised to marry his heir, Deacon. Unfortunately, the earl, now deceased, kept his plans a secret, and when Maddie shows up at the castle expecting to marry, she finds that Deacon wants nothing to do with her—especially when it’s revealed she wasn’t born a Wetherby. Madeline’s prospects are bleak. She’s been brought up a lady only to learn that her roots are working class. It’s 1819 in Manchester, and she’s without relations to claim her or a husband to protect her. When Deacon’s brother Nash proposes to marry her, in exchange for some money from his brother, she has little choice but to accept. The novel follows the two as they struggle to find love. Set against the backdrop of a turbulent time in British history, Penttila’s novel shines a light on the plights of both women and the workers of England. Maddie’s struggle to find her identity and some measure of independence parallels the struggles of working-class Mancunians; caught between two worlds, belonging fully to neither, she fights to find her voice as the working class fights for theirs through parliamentary reform. History buffs in particular will enjoy exploring the Peterloo Massacre, one of the defining moments of British history, a conflict in which Maddie plays a central role. Though she suffers great loss, she’s ultimately rewarded for challenging social norms. Without overburdening the story, the many details surrounding the massacre provide rich historical context, but romance is still at the novel’s core. Fortunately, led by genuine and engaging Maddie, the story is refreshingly free of overly sappy scenes and heavy-handed descriptions.
An artful blend of history and romance.Pub Date: Dec. 20, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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
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