The story of a con artist so good that even the reader will want to suspend disbelief.
A beautiful young woman swindles two vulnerable strangers.
After the recent death of her wife, Shelby has been unable to push past her grief. She finally forces herself to visit a support group, but as she takes her seat at the meeting, she quickly decides it was a mistake. Then Cammie walks in. She’s young, gorgeous, and complicated. Most of all, she seems newly down on her luck, like she needs a caretaker. Suddenly, Shelby feels like she has a purpose in life again. She takes Cammie into her home, loaning her clothing and money, buying her food, and, best of all, rediscovering her own joy by tending to someone else’s needs. Meanwhile, Gibson, a recently divorced middle-aged man who’s been suffering from depression and loneliness, meets Cammie one night in a bar. When she comes on to him, he can’t believe his luck. In a blink, he’s having incredible sex for the first time in as long as he can remember. Not only that, he’s also enjoying deep, meaningful conversations with this vixen. It doesn’t feel like a big deal to him when he tells her she can crash at his place while she works out some temporary housing problems. As time unfolds, both Shelby and Gibson receive warnings from friends that Cammie seems like trouble, but they are too smitten to care. Everything changes when Shelby and Gibson meet each other. Told in the third person, the book alternates between Shelby’s and Gibson’s journeys, tracing their experiences with Cammie and the ways in which this magnetic young woman changes each of their lives. Whittall does an excellent job of showing all that is appealing about Cammie while also revealing her duplicitousness. The novel raises the question of whether Cammie, even with her morally bereft antics, might still be a positive influence in the lives of the people she meets and deceives. The author also manages to draw quirky, memorable characters who are deeply flawed and still compelling. With accessible prose, insight into human nature, a slow build of suspense, and a fresh look at how we handle difficult events, Whittall has created a real winner.
The story of a con artist so good that even the reader will want to suspend disbelief.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9781524799441
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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