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
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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