Entertaining and delicious Stuart-era scandalmongering.
The final installment of Borman’s lively trilogy—begun in The King's Witch (2018) and The Devil's Slave (2019)—about a secretly Catholic woman embedded in the treacherous court of King James I.
Frances, now mother of two sons, has again left her country retreat for James’ court, this time due to her own mixed concern and longing for her husband, Sir Thomas Tyringham, whose duties as master of buckhounds keep him locked into the busy royal hunting schedule. At court, excitement mounts thanks to an element the first two volumes of this series lacked: a truly diabolical antagonist. Frances is not exactly welcome at court—in fact, ladies-in-waiting have no function since Queen Anne now lives apart from the king. James’ closest and most powerful advisers are now his male “favourites”—and the newest and most virulently scheming of these is George Villiers. Thanks to his angelic looks, seductive charm, and complete lack of scruples, Villiers is soon the king’s de facto consort, garnering the Order of the Garter and a dukedom along the way. Villiers is vicious to anyone in that way, including Thomas, whose work life Villiers, as master of horse, makes miserable—he is the ultimate bad boss. Villiers is also responsible for the loss of Frances’ pregnancy when he deliberately causes her to fall. Despite this, and Villiers’ threats to leverage her deepest secrets against her, Frances seems remarkably slow to anger, and the lengthy timeline dilutes the conflict—the action here spans 14 years. Also straining belief is the number of occasions Frances stumbles, unobserved, upon Villiers’ depraved assignations. Frances’ overriding aim is to restore Catholicism to England: In this she is joined by other closet Catholics, including the crown prince, Charles, and Kate, an heiress whom Villiers will stop at nothing, literally, to wed for her money. Scenes starring Villiers come alive as the other characters cope, ineffectually and overcautiously, with the viper in their midst.
Entertaining and delicious Stuart-era scandalmongering.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-5761-4
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
