An affecting but flawed portrait of teenage trauma.
A grieving daughter befriends a high school outsider and uncovers a dark secret in this debut novel.
Still reeling from the death of their mother, Megan Brennar and her brothers, Bobby and Josh, are uprooted from the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, to live in the sleepy town of Jessup, Missouri, where their father will become the chief of police. On the journey to their new home, the Brennars get involved in a traffic accident. The tow truck driver is assisted by a shy, long-haired boy named Shawn, with whom Megan feels an immediate connection. She later discovers that he is an 11th grader at her high school and tries to strike up a conversation with him. Fiercely reclusive, Shawn is reluctant at first but later begins to trust Megan. He reveals that he was physically and sexually abused by a woman he thought was his mother. Megan and Shawn grow closer, drawing strength from each other in their suffering. But further disturbing secrets are revealed regarding Shawn’s family and dangerous criminal activity in the area. In Miller’s heart-rending tale, both Megan and Shawn are vivid, psychologically developed characters. In particular, Shawn’s confessionals about the abusive woman are genuinely upsetting: “She realized she could play my illness for a few days—maybe even a week or two. She beat the living friggin’ daylights out of me that afternoon. I spent the next three days locked in the closet.” The author writes strong dialogue, but her descriptive skills are less well honed. Miller has a tendency toward wordiness, as here when a character observes Shawn: “Falling into a V in the cradle of his shoulder bones, the golden strands of his hair glimmered under the sun, and with his hands wedged into his back pockets, his veined arms dominated my attention.” On other occasions, the descriptive approach is perfunctory and naïve: “The birds frolicked after the night’s storm and a bullfrog croaked.” Miller’s plotline twists and turns unexpectedly, making for compelling reading—although the story has a frustrating ending that lacks conviction. While this uneven novel is indicative of a new author wrestling to settle on a suitable style, there are significant sparks of promise here.
An affecting but flawed portrait of teenage trauma.Pub Date: April 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-578-86087-9
Page Count: 459
Publisher: Unveiled Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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