An engrossing drama about a wife’s crucial transformation.
In this debut novel, a woman embarks on a life-changing trip and confronts her abusive husband.
Reeling from the discovery of a love child her husband, Alex, had with another woman, Abby Montgomery flies to Italy to track down her grandmother’s old friend Francesca. While there, Abby meets Francesca’s attractive photographer grandson, Daniel Quinn. Abby and Daniel immediately begin a romance, journeying to major European cities. During their travels, Abby learns more about Daniel, including that he tragically lost his wife and son in a car accident. Meanwhile, Abby receives manipulative emails from Alex in which he outlines how she will help raise the son he hid from her for years. Abby eventually returns home to Florida with the intention of ending things with Alex until her unplanned pregnancy and her teenage daughter’s sudden illness throw a wrench in her plans. Abby begins to question why the mother of Alex’s child gave up custody so willingly. And she starts to look at her husband’s toxic behavior in a darker light. Harrow’s novel is a bit of a hybrid. What starts off as a tale reminiscent of Eat, Pray, Love evolves into a story of a woman standing up to her abuser. Interspersed among the chapters are Abby’s past journal entries, highlighting Alex’s sinister qualities as she blames herself for his abuse. Abby has difficulty admitting that Alex is abusive because she initially equates the word with being hit: “I know he’s been cruel at times and consistently controlling, but he’s never laid a hand on me.” In this intriguing story, the author deftly examines the complex emotions and thoughts a woman experiences as the victim of domestic abuse. The premise is moving and important, but the writing falls short at times. The dialogue between Daniel and Abby is often melodramatic, particularly at the start of their romance. At one point, Abby tells Daniel: “You have me, and I’m not letting you go.” And while the European adventures give Abby and Daniel quality time together, the spotlighting of different locations feels largely unnecessary. But despite these minor issues, Harrow presents an absorbing tale that is equal parts traumatic, hopeful, and sadly familiar.
An engrossing drama about a wife’s crucial transformation.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-948051-82-8
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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