A likable, if lesser, effort from Pekkanen.
Pekkanen, having written a number of popular, character-driven novels, returns to comfortable terrain by focusing on two couples running a Vermont bed-and-breakfast.
When Rand and Alyssa offer to share their new B&B business with Peter and Kira, it seems an unlikely venture. Brothers Rand and Peter have an icy relationship, and Kira wants to make partner at her Miami law firm, not eggs Benedict for skiers. Rand and Alyssa, spontaneous, world-traveling bohemians, are just as improbable candidates for running an inn, but soon, the four find themselves together, fixing the old place up. Their first guests give them more than they bargained for—newly engaged Scott and Jessica decide to have their large winter wedding at the B&B. Though a boon for business, the timing couldn't be worse: Rand and Alyssa are going to China to adopt a baby. Though Alyssa is thrilled, Rand isn't sure about parenthood, and Peter starts pressuring skittish Kira to start their own family. Alyssa then discovers she's pregnant and needs complete bed rest. Thankfully, Dawn arrives on the scene; she reveals little about herself, but the reader has been privy to her sad tale since the novel's opening. An unassuming assistant at a New York investment firm, Dawn is thrilled (and surprised) when dashing Tucker falls for her. He says he's the CEO's son but changed his name and is starting in the mail room to prove himself; now if only Dawn could help him cook the books so he can make an "investment." Before she knows it, Dawn is on the run with $100,000 in her handbag, Tucker and the police chasing her. Although this novel shares some of the same qualities as Pekkanen's other successes, Dawn's subplot feels like a strained jolt of danger into an otherwise cohesive, if thinly plotted, family drama.
A likable, if lesser, effort from Pekkanen.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4516-7353-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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