A complex and ambitious adventure for lovers of ancient historical romance.
Screenwriter Collins’ debut novel tells the origin story of the legendary St. Valentine.
In the year 268, a handsome 26-year-old soldier, Valentinus Romanus, known as “Valentine,” saves the empress from an Alemanni attack. After the battle, he reminisces about his first love, a girl whom he knew as Rose, while drunkenly sleeping with Serena, the wife of a Roman magistrate. From the beginning, Valentine is a romantic and a deep thinker with strong morals, which results in him helping a beautiful maiden named Agatha—who turns out to be none other than his long-lost love. Things quickly become even more complicated. After a battle injury, Valentine is taken by Marius, his friend and fellow soldier, to a villa in Arretium to recover. There, he becomes fascinated by the physician of the villa, Deodatus, and his wife, Charu; he's soon Deodatus’ apprentice and learns of the doctor’s practice of marrying Christian couples in secret. Collins’ novel tries to make sense of the historical sources for what might have been the life story of the original Valentine; a long list of those he consulted appears at the back of the book, displaying his commitment to documentation. His book also portrays the treacherous ambition of Roman leadership and their persecution of Christianity. Roman general Claudius’ path to becoming Emperor remains compelling, especially in how it contrasts with Valentine’s more heroic character. Although readers may find the political machinations to be a bit difficult to follow, the novel is full of well-paced drama that will keep them hooked to the end. In particular, the romance between Agatha and Valentine will surely warm hearts: “As they were illuminated by the moon’s glow, their kiss felt like the culmination of their shared history, a perfect union where every moment of their lives had led to this one.”
A complex and ambitious adventure for lovers of ancient historical romance.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798991362405
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.
Childhood friends, almost-sweethearts, a misunderstanding, and a funeral.
Blair Lang and Declan Renshaw were best friends who went on one date before a disagreement and an accident sent them in different directions after high school. Now Blair is back from college to be with her great-aunt Lottie, who’s dying, and to support her single mother in small-town Seabrook, California. Finding a job at a coffee shop puts her in the path of her former boyfriend, since he turns out to be its owner. Can the two get past their mistakes? The novel uses the popular second-chance romance trope, but Pham fails to energize it through interesting characters. Blair’s grief over her great-aunt’s death and her plan to help her mother are overshadowed by internal monologues about her feelings, the way her friends aren’t paying attention to her, and the novel she plans to write. Declan’s distinguishing characteristic, besides being a former high school quarterback, is his skill at building birdhouses. Unsurprisingly, the couple doesn’t have much chemistry; when they embrace, their “bodies meld like…memory foam.” The wooden characters, unusual word choices (“conglomerate of pedestrians,” “litany of plants”), and odd turns of phrase (“tension melting from his eyebrows like butter melting in a warm pan”) are almost enough to obscure the lack of plot development. What passes for stakes is easily defused when Blair comes into an inheritance that saves her from working as a consultant at Ernst & Young in New York—so she can write a romance novel.
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668095188
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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