A feel-good novel that ably tackles big dramas.
An ambitious young woman juggles career success, family, relationships, and friendship in the second installment of the Anaya’s World series.
Anaya Goode has a good job, a loving boyfriend, and a supportive family in sunny Oakland, California. She’s ambitious and working to find additional success as the director of Housing and Community Services for Alameda County. Her team has been tasked with reopening the naval base, which, for Anaya, comes with its own set of personal challenges involving a returning ex-boyfriend and a possibly corrupt colleague. Meanwhile, she tries to balance her work and her personal life as she lives in a crowded house with her father; her Bible-quoting sister Ava, who’s pregnant and jobless again; Ava’s husband, Joe; and their three children. Anaya is simply trying to hold the family together: “If work weren’t enough to drive Anaya mad, she had become the cornerstone of her family since her mom died six years ago—giving financial advice, resolving conflicts (except for the one between her and her sister Ava).” Meanwhile, Anaya supports her close friends Catie and Sophie as they navigate their own obstacles in life. Christy’s novel features a likable, diverse cast of young women, and readers are constantly treated to something unexpected as they attend a baby shower, a work gala, and birthday parties over the course of the narrative. The intriguing story gets more complicated after Jeff, Anaya’s aforementioned old flame, becomes a key team member for the reopening of the naval base. Throughout, Anaya’s struggles with career and family provide plenty of drama. Christy’s prose is consistently approachable and never heavy, even when the subject matter is. Readers who appreciate light fiction with an affable, witty, and determined female protagonist will appreciate this book.
A feel-good novel that ably tackles big dramas.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-945448-43-0
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Boutique of Quality Books
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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