A tale of love and loss with ample atmosphere but underdeveloped characters.
After a tragedy rips her family apart, a woman seeks closure in a witch-filled village in this short novel.
Debut author Kumar spins a tale of redemption and folklore. A common refrain for Rebecca, wife of Jai and mother of young Sunny, is that her husband should “be more responsible.” She notices that Sunny often comes home injured after outings with his father. On a trip to Wisconsin for their wedding anniversary, Jai’s sense of spontaneity proves disastrous: as Rebecca stands looking out at a waterfall, she sees Jai and Sunny running across a rickety bridge. Sunny falls and Jai jumps to save him, but Rebecca knows, as she stares frozen in horror, that they don’t know how to swim. Jai and Sunny drown, leaving Rebecca lost and alone. Later, she visits a fortuneteller to ask about her own fate. She’s told that if she wants to speak to the spirits of her family, she can try visiting an Indian village called Chudailpur. The fortuneteller also says that she has an acquaintance there. Rebecca sets off to India immediately and learns of a powerful witch named Savli who may be able to help her. Meanwhile, Jai toils in the afterlife; Sunny is nowhere to be found, and it becomes Jai’s mission to locate him and become a more responsible parent. The novel’s supernatural elements bring the story to life, and they’re all inventively devised. As a result, the lines between the physical world and the spiritual one blur as Rebecca and Jai confront strange forces in order to contact each other. Many of the characters, though, and particularly Rebecca and Jai, feel wooden and seem more like pawns than real people. Overall, this brief, straightforwardly written story flies by, but readers may find that the village of Chudailpur and its witches linger longer in their minds than the family at the center of the narrative.
A tale of love and loss with ample atmosphere but underdeveloped characters.Pub Date: May 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5086-1039-7
Page Count: 132
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable...
An unlucky woman finally gets lucky in love on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii.
From getting her hand stuck in a claw machine at age 6 to losing her job, Olive Torres has never felt that luck was on her side. But her fortune changes when she scores a free vacation after her identical twin sister and new brother-in-law get food poisoning at their wedding buffet and are too sick to go on their honeymoon. The only catch is that she’ll have to share the honeymoon suite with her least favorite person—Ethan Thomas, the brother of the groom. To make matters worse, Olive’s new boss and Ethan’s ex-girlfriend show up in Hawaii, forcing them both to pretend to be newlyweds so they don’t blow their cover, as their all-inclusive vacation package is nontransferable and in her sister’s name. Plus, Ethan really wants to save face in front of his ex. The story is told almost exclusively from Olive’s point of view, filtering all communication through her cynical lens until Ethan can win her over (and finally have his say in the epilogue). To get to the happily-ever-after, Ethan doesn’t have to prove to Olive that he can be a better man, only that he was never the jerk she thought he was—for instance, when she thought he was judging her for eating cheese curds, maybe he was actually thinking of asking her out. Blending witty banter with healthy adult communication, the fake newlyweds have real chemistry as they talk it out over snorkeling trips, couples massages, and a few too many tropical drinks to get to the truth—that they’re crazy about each other.
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable as well as free.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2803-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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