A well-researched exploration of love and redemption against the backdrop of post–World War II New England.
Shortly after World War II, a young woman falls for the prized son of a wealthy family and finds herself caught in a web of international espionage.
The book opens in 1954 as Emilia Winthrop, a professor at Wellesley College, receives a phone call from her aunt informing her that the Peabodys are returning to Winthrop Island to restore their summer home. Summerly hasn’t been used since just after the war, and the return of this prominent family raises many questions. The book then shifts to 1946, back when Emilia still lived on Winthrop Island. Though the island bears her family's name, the Winthrops sold their land generations earlier, and they have since acted as hired help for the wealthy vacationers who use the place as a summer playground. Emilia reconnects with Shep Peabody, her best childhood friend, who has returned from the war a hero. As they get to know each other all over again, Emilia wonders if she and Shep could be more than just friends, though she worries their family backgrounds are simply too different. Meanwhile, Shep’s cosmopolitan and mysterious Aunt Olive has just arrived on the island, bringing along her high fashion and tales of Europe during the war. While Emilia revels in Olive's worldliness and sophistication, others on the island begin to grow suspicious of the long-lost aunt and her unusual behaviors. As the accusations against Olive grow increasingly serious, Emilia is forced to defend her new friend against allegations of disloyalty to the U.S., even whispers of treason and spying. As tensions continue to build, Emilia wonders whether Olive's presence on Winthrop might destroy her budding relationship with Shep, or worse. When the story shifts back to 1954, an older Emilia must confront the memories of that fateful summer and ask herself if she can claim the life she's always wanted. With a narrative that starts in the middle and jumps frequently between timelines, Williams’ novel requires patience as readers get the lay of the land. Once the plotlines become clearer, suspense builds, and the novel becomes entirely engaging. Full of evocative, whip-sharp dialogue, the book shines especially in its description of fictional Winthrop Island, a New England vacation enclave something like Nantucket but with idiosyncrasies and traditions all its own. As the characters struggle to regain their footing after the war, there are moments when excessive description and lengthy backstory get in the way of the plot. Even so, the author’s deft exploration of many thought-provoking issues, from social class to personal responsibility and regret, make this one a winner.
A well-researched exploration of love and redemption against the backdrop of post–World War II New England.Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9780063020849
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
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