A provocative read about love and forgiveness.
A loving marriage is thrown into jeopardy when a secret from the past threatens to expose a costly mistake in Cullen’s (Only Summer, 2018, etc.) novel.
Jack and Ellie Miller have a solid marriage; they’ve been together for 18 years and have three healthy kids and successful careers. Life is generally quiet and predictable in their quaint Connecticut town with daily soccer games, carpooling dates, and family activities at home. For Jack and Ellie, any responsibilities outside the house are purely professional; Jack teaches economics at Yale University, and Ellie runs her own popular yoga studio. But they’re human, after all, and make mistakes—and one that Jack made 19 years ago has come back to haunt him. He’s suddenly thrown into a panic as he realizes that his past transgression has the power to destroy his marriage. Then it turns out that Ellie is pregnant. As the couple struggles with new revelations, they must also deal with their teenage daughter Sydney’s rebellious nature. Will Jack and Ellie be able to embrace the truth in time to save their marriage and family? The dialogue is snappy and contemporary, with moments of wit. Because each chapter is told from the first-person perspective of a specific character, readers get intriguing access to their private thoughts, such as this passage, narrated by Ellie: “ ‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ I say to Jack, blowing him a kiss as I turn to go upstairs, something that only old married couples must do.” Cullen realistically portrays the dynamics of a long-term couple struggling to juggle work and family commitments, with all the stress and conflict they entail. Sydney’s personal crisis adds an unexpected complication to the plot, and it’s compelling to see how Jack and Ellie handle their own problems while trying to remain proactive parents.
A provocative read about love and forgiveness.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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