A quick-witted exploration of the underbelly of college sports.
A college administrator gets her dream promotion but finds herself embroiled in scandal, mystery, and sexism when she takes the position.
One morning, Nora Bennet gets a call from her boss, Sal Higgins, who’s just been fired from his job as athletic director at sports-crazy Renton University—the result of a news article accusing him of bribing professors to inflate grades of student athletes. Sal congratulates Nora, telling her she will take over the position he’s vacating. As thrilled as Nora is, she never anticipated the difficulties that would come with replacing a man as beloved, and also as shady, as Sal. A barrage of belligerent phone calls from angry donors ensues, and Nora begins to realize that Sal wasn’t the only Renton employee playing dirty. Amid rumors and suspicion, not to mention an ongoing NCAA investigation, Nora must continue running the school’s athletics while tolerating constant doubt about her abilities. As a woman in sports, she’s had to work twice as hard as the men around her, but as things at Renton grow increasingly complicated, she wonders if this time, her best won’t be good enough. The book follows Nora as well as three other women who are pulled into the scandal: Alexis, a professor who’s taught many of the athletes at issue; Anne, a student intern in the athletics department; and Lauren, Sal’s wife, all trying to navigate the complexities of the chaos Sal has left in his wake. This is a fast-paced, plot-driven novel, and the action doesn’t lag for a moment. The story deftly portrays how quickly friendships, reputations, and careers can be undone. At times, the narrative moves so quickly that actions feel as if they're coming from left field, and the setting could have been fleshed out. Even so, the realistic dialogue, unexpected twists, and energetic cast of characters will keep readers turning pages.
A quick-witted exploration of the underbelly of college sports.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781662516290
Page Count: 299
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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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