Grab a handful of tissues, think The Notebook and then start speculating on actors best suited to bring Gordon and Glenna to...
Golden’s breakout debut fiction is a passionate, yet melancholy, story of love, loss and reconciliation.
It’s 1968. Gordon Meyers is stumbling through Brooklyn College, reading about Vietnam and contemplating his father’s World War II heroism and Silver Star. He has a 2S deferment, and his mother is happy, but Gordon is unsettled, grasping onto the idea he could be a writer. With his uncle’s help, Gordon gets a gig writing freelance features for Long Island Press. His first assignment is to write a piece on a group of medical students lobbying for legalized abortion. In the process, Gordon interviews Glenna Rising, a dazzlingly beautiful and casually sexy medical student. Attraction is immediate, and soon Gordon takes up residence in Glenna’s apartment in an old white colonial house in the Bronx, an idyllic place she shares with fellow medical students Palmer, WASP through and through, quickly nicknamed Biff the Brooks Brothers Mouse by Gordon, and zaftig Robin, a nominal political radical. Golden’s novel follows Gordon and Glenna’s love from the 1960s to a final reunion three decades later. The author writes familiarly of young love’s angst and immaturity, insecurities and circumventions. The young lovers struggle to find a life together against a backdrop of social uncertainties, ambition and family drama, each burdened by shadows of their past. Glenna is consumed by medical studies and part-time work in an illicit abortion enterprise. Gordon is confused by his ambitions and shadowed by his desire to experience war. Then comes the inevitable breakup. Glenna drifts; Gordon is drafted. There is marriage and a son for Gordon and a marriage of safety and convenience for Glenna. Finally in the midst of a snowstorm, Gordon is inexorably drawn to see Glenna again, not to dispense with ghosts from the past but rather as part of “the long, jagged arc” of his life.
Grab a handful of tissues, think The Notebook and then start speculating on actors best suited to bring Gordon and Glenna to the big screen.Pub Date: April 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-5632-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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