A cozy, conversational read featuring a lovably neurotic heroine.
In Schnall’s debut novel, shocking news derails a woman’s plans for her 40th birthday and prompts a journey of self-discovery.
As she prepares to send her youngest child off to school, stay-at-home mom Grace May dreams of filling her free time writing for Westchester Weekly magazine and rekindling her relationship with her husband, Darren. Unfortunately, the magazine shuts down before she pens her first column, and Darren makes a tearful confession that he cheated on Grace with a cocktail waitress. At first, Grace’s situation doesn’t seem to justify her panic: She doesn’t need to work, and her appropriately sheepish husband seems willing to wine and dine his way back into her good graces. But this isn’t enough to stop Grace from feeling sorry for herself or from holding a grudge against Darren. The real source of her discomfort becomes clear as she explains her wavering emotions and self-critical thoughts in long stretches of dialogue with her best friend, Cameron, who’s having fertility problems, and her mother and sister, whose relationships with Grace can’t fill the void left by her other sister’s death. “I’m so conflicted about whether I’m supposed to have a job or whether I’m supposed to be home with the boys,” Grace laments. Her mother replies, “You’re concerned with what you’re supposed to do, instead of doing what you want to do,” and she cites how Grace took ballet classes as a child because her teacher complimented her—not because she liked them. The author’s blend of girl talk and self-help wisdom reads like a conversation overheard at Starbucks: It’s written in a friendly, nonjudgmental voice that any woman would want to hear after a bad day. Just as Grace is ready to forgive Darren, a reunion with her high school crush threatens their marriage once again, and Cameron announces a shocking revelation of her own. Faced with real-world problems, Grace adjusts her priorities, confronts her fears, and in the process of being true to herself, learns the real meaning of the word “grace.”
A cozy, conversational read featuring a lovably neurotic heroine.Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-940716-13-8
Page Count: 274
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Hoover is one of the freshest voices in new-adult fiction, and her latest resonates with true emotion, unforgettable...
Sydney and Ridge make beautiful music together in a love triangle written by Hoover (Losing Hope, 2013, etc.), with a link to a digital soundtrack by American Idol contestant Griffin Peterson.
Hoover is a master at writing scenes from dual perspectives. While music student Sydney is watching her neighbor Ridge play guitar on his balcony across the courtyard, Ridge is watching Sydney’s boyfriend, Hunter, secretly make out with her best friend on her balcony. The two begin a songwriting partnership that grows into something more once Sydney dumps Hunter and decides to crash with Ridge and his two roommates while she gets back on her feet. She finds out after the fact that Ridge already has a long-distance girlfriend, Maggie—and that he's deaf. Ridge’s deafness doesn’t impede their relationship or their music. In fact, it creates opportunities for sexy nonverbal communication and witty text messages: Ridge tenderly washes off a message he wrote on Sydney’s hand in ink, and when Sydney adds a few too many e’s to the word “squee” in her text, Ridge replies, “If those letters really make up a sound, I am so, so glad I can’t hear it.” While they fight their mutual attraction, their hope that “maybe someday” they can be together playfully comes out in their music. Peterson’s eight original songs flesh out Sydney’s lyrics with a good mix of moody musical styles: “Living a Lie” has the drama of a Coldplay piano ballad, while the chorus of “Maybe Someday” marches to the rhythm of the Lumineers. But Ridge’s lingering feelings for Maggie cause heartache for all three of them. Independent Maggie never complains about Ridge’s friendship with Sydney, and it's hard to even want Ridge to leave Maggie when she reveals her devastating secret. But Ridge can’t hide his feelings for Sydney long—and they face their dilemma with refreshing emotional honesty.
Hoover is one of the freshest voices in new-adult fiction, and her latest resonates with true emotion, unforgettable characters and just the right amount of sexual tension.Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-5316-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 6, 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
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