An inspiring adventure with a strong heroine.
In Conner’s first novel, a young woman starts seeing visions, changing her world forever.
Aliyah’s existence is a peaceful one. In her junior year of high school in a quiet town, she’s supported by a loving single mother, good friends, and a church community. Only one thing disturbs her: her dreams. They seem so real that they’re nearly visions, and she doesn’t understand what they mean. With the help of Pastor Mike, her church’s leader, and his foster son, Jesse, Aliyah begins to come to terms with her gift. It takes a great tragedy for her to meet Jesus and truly understand her special purpose on Earth, though the grief she feels in the aftermath threatens to overwhelm her trust in the divine plan. She’s pulled back into using her gift in the service of a friend, after which a series of dramatic events unfolds. Pastor Mike and Jesse also work in the service of God in special ways, as Aliyah learns, and she begins to refine her understanding of her gifts in their company. “You will have to choose to see the light,” Pastor Mike tells her when she’s in the grip of horrible dreams. “God has already chosen you, but you have to do your part to follow His light. Just remember that His light is more powerful than the dark; always. You don’t ever have to be afraid.” Though many influential men are present in Aliyah’s life, she is an effective and positive force in the world. Her blossoming romance with Jesse is cut short by his graduation, when they decide they both need to see what God wants them to be before they proceed, leaving Aliyah refreshingly undefined by romance. Conner’s novel is ideal for teenagers who, preferring their reading both religious and exciting, are ready for discussions about the light and dark at play in all our lives.
An inspiring adventure with a strong heroine.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4908-5190-7
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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