A thoroughly researched and realized novel, but one that’s hampered by excessive exposition.
In the concluding volume of Bracewell’s historical fiction trilogy, Emma of Normandy tries to salvage a kingdom from impending conquest.
It’s the year 1012, and Emma, the Queen of England, occupies a precarious seat of power. Her joyless marriage helped to create an unsteady alliance between her brother Richard, the Duke of Normandy, and her husband, King Æthelred, “a suspicious, vengeful man.” However, Emma is drawn to Athelstan, the king’s son by his first wife; the two have already once “surrendered to temptation that had long been held in check.” When Thorkell, a Danish warlord, pledges loyalty and troops to England, the threat of Danish invasion seems less significant, but Swein, the King of Denmark, sees a path to conquest in the north, where England may not be as secure as Æthelred believes. Soon, the Danes are sacking English towns, one after another. Æthelred’s lack of response may lead to his downfall, but Emma’s fate, and those of the people she loves, is less certain. Bracewell presents a colorful cast of heroes and schemers, including Cnut, Swein’s savvy son; Eadric, Æthelred’s ruthless son-in-law; and the ambitious Elgiva, once Æthelred’s mistress and now Cnut’s concubine, who waits to avenge the death of her father and brothers. The narrative bounces between the English and the Danes as Bracewell doggedly lays out their competing agendas. However, the novel’s faithfulness to historical detail and exposition can cause the plot to sputter and stall at times, as the author seizes every chance to rehash past events or drop in new backstory. For instance, when Elgiva reunites with Alric, an ally, the action pauses: “Her mind was suddenly flooded with memories of him,” Bracewell writes, before going through their shared history—a strategy that saps the narrative tension. Still, the depth and scope of this book is impressive, and the steady prose keeps things even-keeled amid choppy seas of intrigue and upheaval.
A thoroughly researched and realized novel, but one that’s hampered by excessive exposition.Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-942209-81-2
Page Count: 450
Publisher: Bellastoria Press LLP
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.
Childhood friends, almost-sweethearts, a misunderstanding, and a funeral.
Blair Lang and Declan Renshaw were best friends who went on one date before a disagreement and an accident sent them in different directions after high school. Now Blair is back from college to be with her great-aunt Lottie, who’s dying, and to support her single mother in small-town Seabrook, California. Finding a job at a coffee shop puts her in the path of her former boyfriend, since he turns out to be its owner. Can the two get past their mistakes? The novel uses the popular second-chance romance trope, but Pham fails to energize it through interesting characters. Blair’s grief over her great-aunt’s death and her plan to help her mother are overshadowed by internal monologues about her feelings, the way her friends aren’t paying attention to her, and the novel she plans to write. Declan’s distinguishing characteristic, besides being a former high school quarterback, is his skill at building birdhouses. Unsurprisingly, the couple doesn’t have much chemistry; when they embrace, their “bodies meld like…memory foam.” The wooden characters, unusual word choices (“conglomerate of pedestrians,” “litany of plants”), and odd turns of phrase (“tension melting from his eyebrows like butter melting in a warm pan”) are almost enough to obscure the lack of plot development. What passes for stakes is easily defused when Blair comes into an inheritance that saves her from working as a consultant at Ernst & Young in New York—so she can write a romance novel.
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668095188
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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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