Lacks the zest of the earlier books and doubles down on the weak writing.
An elite Black community in coastal Maryland learns that the mayor has a “secret love child.”
Having set her previous Summer Beach books in the enclaves of Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, and Sag Harbor, New York, The View host Hostin closes up shop in Highland Beach, a resort community founded in the late 19th century by Frederick Douglass’ son. According to its website, it is "residential only, does not offer opportunities for tourism and cannot accommodate visits from the general public." Hostin definitely conveys that attitude as her character Olivia Jones pays a hesitant first visit to the snooty town, whose mayor is her long-estranged father, Charles "CJ" Jones, whose reelection will be compromised by her arrival. (Olivia’s complicated backstory is explained hastily and will remain opaque to those who haven’t read the first two books.) She is also meeting for the first time her evil grandmother, Christine Douglass-Jones (that Douglass), a woman who sees the death of two of her three children as more a reputation problem than a cause for mourning. Don’t feel sorry for me, she tells an old enemy, "I have money, class, and I’ve traveled to places you’ve only dreamed of." Maybe this is meant to be a laugh line, but some of the wooden dialogue, the tabloid-type gossip about Frederick Douglass, and the oddly placed, uninspiring descriptions of people’s attire are not. In one laugh-out-loud moment, a deus ex machinacharacter storms into a town meeting “wearing an ankle-length persimmon dress.” No designer or anything! As in previous books, characters rely on therapy to deal with their messy lives and romances (Olivia has managed to screw up a good thing she had going in Sag Harbor). The wisdom of Olivia’s therapist, Dr. LaGrange, saves the day: “Life is a journey. You hit a milestone and then you move on to your next goal. The work never really ends. Nor should it.” This beach trilogy, however, should.
Lacks the zest of the earlier books and doubles down on the weak writing.Pub Date: May 28, 2024
ISBN: 9780062994257
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
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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