An endearing narrator and surprising turns elevate this novel’s cycles of abuse, addiction, and recovery.
Edwards’ novel traces a woman’s descent into the world of drug trafficking and her search for a better life.
“You made your bed. Now go lie in it,” says Ava Harrison’s harsh mother when her daughter seeks help to escape her abusive marriage. After a childhood of neglect and emotional abuse in New Jersey, Ava marries Tom in 1963, only to discover that they will never make the loving home she craves when Tom beats and rapes her on their wedding night. As a naturally gifted performer, Ava eventually finds liberation through the easy money of dancing at the local club, Gentlemen’s Delight, and she manages to escape her marriage with her two young sons. With hippie drug culture in full swing, it isn’t long before Ava relies on a combination of marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol to fuel her performances and get through her days. After losing custody of her children, she meets her second husband, a loving but lazy stoner named Jack Novak, and the charming Mike Ambrose—a drug trafficker who draws Ava into his world of international smuggling. From Colombia to Kenya, Ava follows Mike into a wild existence very different from her humble beginnings—one with extreme consequences. Edwards immediately captures readers’ sympathy for Ava from the moment she describes her childhood spent as an average girl who just wants her parents’ love and approval. Each of Ava’s increasingly terrible decisions flows logically from her history and the societal pressures on women of the time; it’s hard not to empathize. The novel’s first-person narration has a flowing, conversational style, but it can feel a bit flat at times—in some chapters, it’s as if Ava is merely summarizing large swaths of her life for readers rather than immersing them in her experience. However, some truly harrowing scenes involving abuse, drug smuggling, and foreign prisons all ratchet up the tension and will keep readers engaged along her long road to redemption.
An endearing narrator and surprising turns elevate this novel’s cycles of abuse, addiction, and recovery.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 424
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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