Reid is a genius of mimicry and social observation.
A very thin wall in a college dorm causes complications for eavesdroppers on both sides.
Reid follows her debut, Such a Fun Age (2020), with another sharp, edgy social novel, this time set at the University of Arkansas. Primary among the large cast are Agatha, a 38-year-old gay white visiting professor; Millie, a Black 24-year-old RA; and the five undergrads who live in the suite next door to her. The students include a threesome of white friends—Agatha categorizes them as “Jenna: tall. Casey: southern. Tyler: mean” when she interviews them for a book she’s working on—and two loners: Peyton (who is Black) and the white Kennedy, who’s been through a terrible experience just before arriving at college. Kennedy can hear everything the RAs say when they meet up in Millie’s room, and she has so little going on in her own life that she listens in quite a bit. Meanwhile, everything that’s said in the suites is heard loud and clear in Millie’s room. So when Agatha becomes fascinated with the girls after that initial interview, particularly with the way they talk and their relationships to money, she starts paying Millie (!) to let her come in and eavesdrop on them once a week. As an author, Reid has the very same obsessions she gives her character Agatha, and the guilty pleasure of the book is the way she nails the characters’ speech styles, Southern accents, and behavior and her unerring choice of products and other accoutrements to surround them with. “Tyler wasn’t actively cruel to Kennedy, but she definitely wasn’t all that nice. The small ‘hey’ she gave when Kennedy opened the door stung with the truce of roommate civility. Perhaps it felt more hostile in comparison to the way she greeted Peyton. She’d go ‘Oh hello, roomie,’ or ‘Pey-Pey’s home.’ And then Peyton would say, ‘Okaayyy. Hiii.’ ” Then Agatha decides to start selling these “interviews” to Teen Vogue, and Millie finds she can’t stop thinking about Agatha, and mean pranks beget even meaner ones—Ohmahlord, as Casey would say.
Reid is a genius of mimicry and social observation.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2024
ISBN: 9780593328200
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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
A touching story of love and grief ends in an epic battle of good versus evil.
Roberts’ latest may move you to tears, or joy, or dread, or all three.
Every summer, John and Cora Fox visit Cora’s mother, Lucy Lannigan, in Redbud Hollow, Kentucky, leaving their children, 12-year-old Thea and 10-year-old Rem, for a two-week taste of heaven. The children love Grammie Lucy far more than John’s snooty family, which looks down on Cora. Lucy, a healer with deep Appalachian roots, loves animals, cooks the best meals, plays musical instruments, and makes soap and candles for her thriving business. Thea—who’s inherited the psychic abilities passed down through the women of Lucy’s family—has vivid magical dreams, one of which becomes a living nightmare when a psychopath robs and murders John and Cora as Thea watches helplessly. Thea’s description of the killer and her ability to see him in real time help the skeptical police catch Ray Riggs, who goes to prison for life. Although Thea and Rem go on to have a wonderful childhood with Grammie, Thea constantly wages a mental battle with Riggs, who tries to use his own psychic abilities to get into her mind. Over the years, Thea uses her imagination to become a game designer while the more business-minded Rem helps manage her career. Thea eventually builds a house near Lucy, where a newly arrived neighbor is her teen crush, singer-songwriter Tyler Brennan. Tyler has his own issues and is protective of his young son but slowly builds a loving relationship with Thea, whose silence about her abilities leads to a devastating misunderstanding. At first Thea tries to keep Riggs locked out of her mind. As her powers grow, she torments him. Finally, she realizes that she must win this battle and destroy him if she’s ever to have peace.
A touching story of love and grief ends in an epic battle of good versus evil.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781250289698
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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