Deception and tenderness mingle in this touching story.
A mother’s carefully stacked house of cards collapses when a daughter goes sleuthing.
Vandy Guru is a successful advice columnist who has all the answers. That is, until her husband, Vir, passes away, leaving her with grief and an inability to address her acolytes’ problems. Then her daughter, Mallika, a talented choreographer who’s recently auditioned for a Netflix film, goes missing. Mallika fails to meet her mother, who’s returning from a speaking tour, at the airport and then doesn't show up at her cousin’s wedding dance practice. Vandy calls her own mother, who offers up cryptic clues about where Mallika went but provides no real help, sending Vandy into a tailspin. While Vandy is at a loss, the reader is able to piece together the mystery as Dev alternates among chapters told from the perspectives of Vandy, Mallika, and Rani Parekh, a mysterious character whose story is slowly revealed. As Mallika deals with career setbacks and feelings of self-doubt, she begins to uncover a series of lies that profoundly alters her understanding of her family and her place in the world. Mallika’s journey of discovery sets off Vandy’s own journey, forcing Vandy to confront truths she has worked hard to keep hidden. Dev does not do enough to round out Mallika’s character, but the scenes between Vandy and her childhood friend Rani are funny, genuine, and, at times, heartbreaking. While the story does hinge on some less-than-believable events, Dev’s characteristic strength at writing relationships between loved ones grounds this larger-than-life plot in a poignant reality: “There was a whole chunk of her life that her daughter knew nothing about. What was the point of sharing something that caused so much pain? Vandy had found a solution, and she’d borne the consequences.”
Deception and tenderness mingle in this touching story.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781662513978
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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