by Sameer Zahr ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 2020
While not every moment is captivating, this uplifting tale shows how ideas can transform lives.
A novel focuses on a spiritually ambitious power couple.
Peter Donovan is a 29-year-old stockbroker in New York City. In the opening pages, his 25-year-old wife, Amy, decides to leave him. She has taken up with a man in their apartment building. Peter uses this momentous event as an opportunity: He heads to a retreat in California. It is there that he learns to meditate and meets Stella Cornfield, an acquaintance of an investment banker. Stella is also recently single and on a spiritual journey of her own. When the two return to the East Coast, they connect and end up forming a couple. Both are successful and wealthy, yet they yearn for something more from life. They find themselves engrossed by the works of authors like Khalil Gibran and Neville Goddard. Both are also troubled by their former lovers. Amy seems bent on a downward spiral since her breakup with Peter and asks for help. Stella’s ex-boyfriend Marty Chen sues her on baseless grounds. Her lawyer demands that Marty donate $1 million to a charity of Stella’s choosing. Stella then decides to use the money to create something special with Peter. It is a decision that will ultimately benefit everyone. Zahr’s story is at its best when exploring the finer points of Peter’s and Stella’s beliefs. Goddard’s ideas receive particular attention and even influence Stella’s views on her health. Readers are shown firsthand just how one can take concepts and put them into action. But the dialogue that propels the tale tends to be less illuminating. Characters often express themselves with bland sentiments. For instance, Peter says of Amy early on: “I’m not eager to take her back nor do I miss her company.” At a later point, one character flatly asks another: “What are your plans for this weekend?” Nevertheless, the book makes philosophical concepts relatable. Though they exist in a work of fiction, the intriguing characters change in ways that demonstrate the true power of their convictions.
While not every moment is captivating, this uplifting tale shows how ideas can transform lives.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-951933-82-1
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Sameer Zahr
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015
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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
by Rebecca Yarros ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 2019
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
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A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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