A sexy, elegantly crafted debut.
After discovering her husband has been unfaithful, a politician’s wife revisits her life choices and everything she gave up for her husband’s career.
Rachel is the perfect wife to Matt Abbott, the mayor of Oasis Springs, a fictional town near Washington, D.C. During Matt’s 40th birthday party, he sends her a racy photograph of himself. It’s so out of character that she instantly realizes the text was meant for someone else and her husband is having an affair. Having met Matt at a difficult time in her life, she was initially content to put aside her dreams of a career in art photography in order to play her role as the White politician’s Black trophy wife. Over time, having forsaken her ambition in favor of her husband’s weighs more heavily on her, and his infidelity makes her sacrifices feel all the more painful. She strikes a deal with him that she will remain in their marriage, playing up to the press for the remainder of his current campaign, provided she gets the house and $1 million at its conclusion. When she meets Nathan Vasquez, a fellow artist who reawakens her old passions, she’s suddenly not so sure she can wait out the remainder of her sentence with Matt. As Rachel begins a steamy affair with Nathan, she worries she’s jeopardizing her daughter’s financial future and her own reputation. Told in an engaging, close third-person narrative, the book alternates between Rachel’s and Nathan’s perspectives. While it is obvious almost immediately that there will be an affair between them, there is joy and suspense in watching it unfold. The way the author manages to center their passion for each other around art is clever and engaging. Teeming with complicated family dynamics and the negative aspects of media attention, the novel also examines the difficulty of being in the public eye. The author also explores the complexities of interracial marriage with a perspective that feels fresh and insightful.
A sexy, elegantly crafted debut.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781538722770
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
Haphazard and undemanding.
A sports agent’s first official client is the man she dumped years ago in college.
After two years of hard work as an underling, Nora Mackenzie is finally being promoted to full-time sports agent. She’s worked hard, kept quiet, and allowed men in the office to call her Mac—a nickname she hates—all to show she’s a team player and “one of the guys.” Unfortunately, her boss instructs her to sign Derek Pender, a football player coming off an injury, who happens to be the man she heartlessly dumped in their senior year of college. Derek signs with her for revenge, seeing it as his opportunity to pay Nora back for callously breaking his heart eight years earlier. He insists she be at his beck and call: answering his emails, running his errands, cooking dinner for his dates. He also refuses to let her explain why she broke up with him without warning or explanation. Nora feels she has no choice but to acquiesce to Derek’s humiliating demands, since she’s worked too hard to let him ruin her dream job. She hopes he’ll thaw and they might become friends, but Derek’s bad behavior is designed to hide the fact that he’s still in love with her. Nora’s characterization is uneven, veering between anger at how she’s treated in the male-dominated field to immature bickering and bantering with Derek. Although Adams likely meant for Derek and Nora’s interactions to have an enemies-to-lovers vibe, the characters instead seem juvenile and stuck in the past. The novel is fueled by a string of tropes—second chance romance! married in Vegas! only one bed!—each randomly deployed to keep the book going despite thin characterization and wan plotting.
Haphazard and undemanding.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593723678
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dell
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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