A high energy, feel-good story about the ghosts of our past and the importance of human connections.
Three women search for different types of long-lost loves in this tale of unlikely friendships.
The novel opens as an older woman named Maude awaits her groom on their wedding day. When Richard doesn’t show, Maude calls him at home, and he admits he’s gotten cold feet. Next, readers meet Mackenzie, whose teenage sister, Tanya, is sneaking out of their bedroom window only to disappear permanently into the dangerous night. Finally, Sunna is introduced. She has been arguing with her closest girlfriend, Brett. As Richard did to Maude and Tanya did to Mackenzie, Brett ghosts Sunna, leaving her angry and confused. A couple of years later, the three women who were left end up renting rooms in the same house in Saskatchewan. The home, owned by Larry Finley, could use some repairs. When water seeps into the mailbox, a letter is partially destroyed, and the women can't determine who it was meant for. All they glean is that the author would like to meet at a local coffee shop. The proposed date and time have also been washed away. Each woman hopes the letter was addressed to her. All three thus decide to visit the designated coffee shop every day and await the writer. During their time at the shop, the women get to know each other. They argue, invade each other’s privacy, and blame each other for strange occurrences around the house. As the days drag on, they discover there are additional mysteries to which they might help each other find answers, and amazingly, they begin to bond. Quirky and unique, the book spans multiple genres, from romance to mystery to good old-fashioned ghost story. The author deftly moves between spheres as she depicts highly divergent characters who ultimately find common ground. Told in the third person, the narrative offers insightful glimpses into the perspectives of all three women and even Larry, their landlord. The fast-paced plot is alternatively funny and heart-wrenching. While certain parts of the plot might stretch the imagination, the human emotions are consistently realistic and engaging.
A high energy, feel-good story about the ghosts of our past and the importance of human connections.Pub Date: June 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1020-7
Page Count: 315
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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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