An unusually thoughtful action-adventure tale, sometimes sabotaged by an excess of ambition.
A medical thriller details a surgeon’s humanitarian mission in eastern Turkey, a region ravaged by sectarian strife and terrorism.
A catastrophic earthquake strikes eastern Turkey, killing thousands and maiming more. Dr. Nicklaus “Nick” Hart, an orthopedic surgeon in Memphis, takes a leave of absence from work to travel there and lend his expert assistance, joined by Ali Hassan, a young surgeon-in-training under his tutelage. Ali is originally from the city of Van, the central site of the disaster. When Nick arrives, he’s confronted by grim conditions: inadequate supplies, disfigured children, and a queue of amputations to perform. Ali is determined to track down his aging parents amid the chaos, and Nick reaches out to old friends Maggie and Buck for assistance, characters reprised from Browne’s (Maya Hope, 2017) first book in his Nicklaus Hart series. Meanwhile, two agents of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Antasha Katrina and Vladimir, are sent to Turkey to find the biblical Tree of Life, reputed to promise extraordinary longevity, if not immortality, a mission personally assigned by President Vladimir Putin. In addition, an Islamic State terrorist band plans to exploit the turmoil of the calamity, infiltrating the area by posing as humanitarian aid workers while sneaking in explosives. Repeating a central theme of the first installment of the series, Nick wrestles with doubt regarding his life’s purpose, especially his Christian faith, a struggle that brings him to the brink of despair. His religious turmoil is set against the backdrop of the age-old antagonism between Shia and Sunni Muslims on ancient Mesopotamian grounds; the author deftly uses characters like Ali, a Kurdish Shia Muslim, and Antasha, a lapsed Jew, to illustrate the region’s immemorial rivalries. Browne has crafted a historically astute and dramatically exciting novel that offers both theological insights and a surfeit of action. He admirably avoids the pitfalls of facile caricature, and seeks an empathetic comprehension of even the least attractive characters, resulting in an impressive moral study. But, as in its predecessor, there is simply too much crammed into one book, with plot overkill that leads to a bloated length. In addition, the story’s message of Christian hope is at times heavy-handedly proselytizing.
An unusually thoughtful action-adventure tale, sometimes sabotaged by an excess of ambition.Pub Date: April 30, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 491
Publisher: Agape Orthopaedics, Inc.
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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