An engrossing, touching novel, perfect for lovers of women’s fiction.
A young woman comes to terms with her psychic abilities and her family’s past in Levitt’s historical novel set in 1890s Missouri.
The women in Sarah Richardson’s family all possess the gift of clairvoyance—they can read moods via the color of another person’s “mist” and see into others’ pasts and presents. These gifts, and the uncomfortable secrets they reveal, have caused the Richardsons some difficulties. When Sarah’s sister Katherine develops a psychic bond with a woman being abused by her husband, Katherine’s attempt to intervene leads to disaster, and her father sends her to an asylum in St. Louis for her own safety (“Katherine’s pleading eyes were locked on mine as the woman placed the cloth into my sister’s mouth and tied it behind her head”). Years later, Sarah still carries guilt about the role she inadvertently played in the situation and moves to St. Louis hoping to reconcile with her sister. Initially, nothing turns out as Sarah hoped; Katherine rebuffs her, and Sarah develops feelings for a man engaged to a friend of hers. When Sarah encounters a timid woman named Norma, who has a dark mist, she realizes that their fates are intertwined and that she has been given a chance to redeem herself. Sarah is determined to help Norma escape her dangerous husband, no matter the cost. This is a passionate, heartwarming novel that effortlessly imbues its historical setting with elements of magical realism. Sarah goes on an inspiring journey as she tests her character, discovering what she believes in and what she’s willing to fight for. (A prominent thread throughout the story is the bond between women and how much stronger they are when they stand in solidarity with each other.) Moments that could have read as saccharine are conveyed with an honesty and elegance. Levitt draws a clear through-line between women’s political goals and their personal lives as Sarah and Katherine both join the local Women’s Equality Society. The dramatic ending stretches credulity a bit, but it’s emotionally satisfying enough to be forgiven.
An engrossing, touching novel, perfect for lovers of women’s fiction.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9798885281157
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Acorn Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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