A second-chance romance shows the many potential pitfalls of road tripping.
Years after a tumultuous breakup, a young woman finds herself crammed into the same tiny car as her ex for a dayslong drive to a mutual friend’s wedding.
Addie and her sister, Deb, are excited to be road tripping from their home in England to rural Scotland for their friend Cherry’s wedding. They’ve planned the trip so perfectly that they don’t even mind transporting a work friend of Cherry’s, an overly apologetic fellow named Rodney. Unfortunately, only a few hours after they set out, they get rear-ended. It turns out the driver is none other than Dylan Abbott, the man Addie has spent two years trying to forget. Worse yet, the car Dylan was driving now needs a tow, leaving him and his best friend, Marcus, without transportation to the very same wedding. Before she can stop herself, Addie invites the men to ride along with her, Deb, and Rodney. Everyone piles into the Mini Cooper, and with each mile they drive, Addie and Dylan find themselves assaulted by memories and unresolved feelings. Meanwhile, the group dynamic, as a whole, is also less than perfect. As the journey progresses, the bickering between the passengers only escalates, creating a slew of awkward moments and surprising revelations. Told alternately from Addie's and Dylan’s perspectives, the novel shifts between “Then,” when they were falling in love, and “Now,” when they are grappling with their unresolved feelings. As a picture of the past begins to crystalize, the author deftly portrays the passion the couple once felt for each other. Unfortunately, other than the sexual chemistry, they seem to be missing a true emotional connection, rendering their potential reunion somewhat less exciting. After the initial flashback scenes, which are quite engaging, Dylan gradually reveals himself to be so self-involved and undirected that his shortcomings weaken the intrigue of his pining over Addie. More fun is watching the other passengers in the car battle against each other as they navigate the uncomfortable ride, squishing into tight spaces and arguing over every possible topic. Despite its unevenness, the story is full of fun: quirky behavior, witty Briticisms, and gleeful slapstick humor.
A second-chance romance shows the many potential pitfalls of road tripping.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-5933-3502-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
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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