A poignant romance anchored by a rich cast of characters and detailed setting, which will likely appeal to fans of...
In Tag’s historical romance, a Japanese-American woman unravels a closely guarded family secret and discovers the depths of her mother’s love.
For Kazuko Armstrong and her younger brother, Patrick, October 2000 is a time of great sadness. Their father, James, is in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease and their mother, Keiko, has suffered a debilitating stroke. Despite their grief, the siblings take great comfort in their parents’ love, which has endured despite many hardships and tragedies. Keiko Tanaka and James Armstrong grew up in Bellevue, Washington, and became engaged shortly after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. They married just before the Tanaka family was sent to a series of internment camps, including the Tule Lake Relocation Center in California, and James enlisted in the U.S. Navy. Kazuko was born at Tule Lake, and the Armstrong family wouldn’t be reunited after the end of the war. During the Tanakas’ internment, they suffered the loss of Keiko’s twin sister, Misaki, and older brother, Masao. Years later, with Keiko on her deathbed, a surprise visitor provides Kazuko with an intriguing connection to her family’s past. Tag successfully combines the story of James and Keiko’s romance with a compelling mystery. The parallel narrative skillfully weaves Kazuko’s modern-day story with Keiko’s experiences in the early 1940s, resulting in a fully realized portrait of both women and their families. The tale is further enriched by its well-developed supporting characters, including Keiko’s parents, Akemi and Isamu; and Takeo Sato, Misaki’s fiancé at Tule Lake. Tag handles the central theme of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II in a forthright, sensitive manner, presenting a variety of viewpoints on the moral and ethical issues involved. The Tanaka, Armstrong and Sato families have very different responses to life in the camps, and as the story develops, Tag shows how the children are affected by their parents’ points of view.
A poignant romance anchored by a rich cast of characters and detailed setting, which will likely appeal to fans of historical fiction.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1462114474
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Sweetwater Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An entertaining page-turner.
Terri Rayburn is devastated that her perfect man belongs to someone else, but once Nate Taggert realizes that Terri's the one for him, her complicated past still stands in the way of their being together.
Terri is attracted to Nate the moment she lays eyes on him, and soon they fall into an easy partnership at the Virginia lake resort she runs with her father. Nate is upfront about being engaged to the mayor’s daughter, Stacy, but she’s in Europe for a few weeks, and it quickly becomes clear to Terri that Nate and Stacy aren’t a great match. However, Terri, whose mother left when she was 2, has always had a problematic relationship with the citizens of Summer Hill. Since Leslie disappeared, the town gossip has made sure everyone remembers her as a promiscuous vixen, a label which tainted Terri as she got older and made her look like a problem when, as Nate begins to understand, she was really a victim. It’s clear to everyone around them that they are falling in love, but even as Nate realizes it himself, Terri is adamant that they can’t be together. She won’t steal him from the popular Stacy because it would mean she’d never be able to live in Summer Hill, and she won’t abandon her father. Deveraux spins an intriguing and unorthodox romance, continuing her Summer Hill branch of the Taggert/Montgomery series with two characters who have some unique, interesting obstacles in their paths and navigate through them with secrets uncovered and old wounds healed. The story is well plotted, though Nate is unnecessarily oblivious sometimes and the book takes an unexpected swing into romantic suspense territory in the last quarter. The solved mystery resolves Nate and Terri’s conflict, though the villain’s motivations seem a little cartoonish.
An entertaining page-turner.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7783-5124-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
While Liv’s more pedestrian story is less romantic than Sophie’s and far less nuanced, Moyes is a born storyteller who makes...
The newest novel by Moyes (Me Before You, 2012, etc.) shares its title with a fictional painting that serves as catalyst in linking two love stories, one set in occupied France during World War I, the other in 21st-century London.
In a French village in 1916, Sophie is helping the family while her husband, Édouard, an artist who studied with Matisse, is off fighting. Sophie’s pluck in standing up to the new German kommandant in the village draws his interest. An art lover, he also notices Édouard's portrait of Sophie, which captures her essence (and the kommandant's adoration). Arranging to dine regularly at Sophie’s inn with his men, he begins a cat-and-mouse courtship. She resists. But learning that Édouard is being held in a particularly harsh “reprisal” camp, she must decide what she will sacrifice for Édouard’s freedom. The rich portrayals of Sophie, her family and neighbors hauntingly capture wartime’s gray morality. Cut to 2006 and a different moral puzzle. Thirty-two-year-old widow Liv has been struggling financially and emotionally since her husband David’s sudden death. She meets Paul in a bar after her purse is stolen. The divorced father is the first man she’s been drawn to since she was widowed. They spend a glorious night together, but after noticing Édouard's portrait of Sophie on Liv’s wall, he rushes away with no explanation. In fact, Paul is as smitten as Liv, but his career is finding and returning stolen art to the rightful owners. Usually the artwork was confiscated by Germans during World War II, not WWI, but Édouard's descendants recently hired him to find this very painting. Liv is not about to part with it; David bought it on their honeymoon because the portrait reminded him of Liv. In love, Liv and Paul soon find themselves on opposite sides of a legal battle.
While Liv’s more pedestrian story is less romantic than Sophie’s and far less nuanced, Moyes is a born storyteller who makes it impossible not to care about her heroines.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-670-02661-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
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