Royal Progress

Name: Royal Progress
Author: Pen Fairchild

by Pen Fairchild ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 15, 2015

Epic in scope, boasting a vast cast and intricate mythology; the sexual nature might be too much for its intended audience,...

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When a princess suddenly inherits her family’s domain, she learns there’s more to her ascendancy than meets the eye.

Bettina “Bettie,” princess of the Domain of Hautland, has spent her life in the shadow of her older brother, Asher, the domain’s heir. They enjoy an affectionate, if antagonistic, relationship under the close watch of their father, Wotan (the ruling Buckstop), and stepmother, the Stoptress Allegra. The siblings spend their days at the Royal Academy with a close group of friends, including Hughlan, Willtom, aka W.T., and Mattey, where they prepare for the Royal Progress, a symbolic excursion into the Outlands in which the domain’s best students demonstrate their leadership skills. Bettie and Ash’s roles in the domain are secure until the day Ash decides to play a prank on Bettie during an archery drill—an act that leads to his death, suddenly making Bettie the domain’s sole heir. Despite his reservations, Wotan decides to send her on the Royal Progress to prove she’s as capable a leader as her brother would have been. What begins as a purely ceremonial exercise quickly turns into race against time as a rebellion breaks out in Hautland, threatening the safety of the Buckstop and the domain. Fairchild, in her debut, succeeds at creating a memorable heroine and placing her in a vivid futuristic landscape replete with secrets and potential danger. Bettie grows into a confident leader over the course of the Royal Progress, an evolution Fairchild captures through a series of challenges, both physical and personal. Memorable supporting characters include Hughlan, Bettie’s longtime unrequited love whose intentions may not always be honorable, and Auban, Bettie’s former classmate who left school under mysterious circumstances. Fairchild skillfully brings the futuristic setting to life through a complex back story that never slows the narrative. For all its successes, however, the story’s graphic sexual content may not be appropriate for younger readers and likewise might alienate some adult readers.

Epic in scope, boasting a vast cast and intricate mythology; the sexual nature might be too much for its intended audience, though.

Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: ArbeitenZeit Media

Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

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Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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THEN SHE WAS GONE

by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

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Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.

Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.