An enjoyable family tale with a tough and memorable hero.
This expansive and elegiac novel focuses on the life of a woman who searches for true love.
Bertelina Solis is a spirited and very beautiful girl, brave and committed enough to have taken a dangerously clandestine part in the Costa Rican revolution of 1948. Always hunting for the true love that her mother never found, Bertelina marries—after a crazy courtship—Oscar, the father of her children, who proves to be undependable and unfaithful. They divorce, and he never seems to have enough money for child support. Further adventures find her as an actor and model, but an attempted rape cheats her of a career in Mexican telenovelas. She and her children eventually move to Los Angeles, where she starts over yet again, as a hotel maid and grocery cashier. (This is where Bertelina becomes Bertha.) Somehow things come together over time, and she realizes that family is all-important. Alvarado has hit on a striking and poignant gambit. When readers first meet the older Bertha, her daughter, Maria, is reading to her from a manuscript. Bertha, who has dementia, is really engaged with it—it’s like a telenovela. What will happen to the hero? Readers will quickly realize that this manuscript is a biography of Bertha that Maria has lovingly written, something that the protagonist no longer has the capacity to recognize. What is emphasized is that Bertha is a classic survivor. She may not find that perfect love, but she is unstoppable. The writing is sometimes awkward (“When he lifted the cigarette onto his lips, the smoke became spiral as it rose”; “stalks of trees” instead of trunks of trees). But this family story is engrossing: Bertha’s kids become successful to varying degrees (middle class at last—the American dream) and can arrange care for her. This is the portrait of a life well lived, even if it is not the journey that Bertha would have planned, which is a reminder and a consolation for readers.
An enjoyable family tale with a tough and memorable hero.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2022
ISBN: 9781088054192
Page Count: 452
Publisher: Determined2 Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.
A collegiate diver and swimmer secretly pursue kink together, and risk falling in love along the way.
Scarlett Vandermeer is struggling. Despite a successful recovery from the injury that almost ended her Stanford diving career, she hasn’t been able to get her head together, and it’s affecting her performance. Plus, she’s trying to stay focused on getting into medical school. A relationship would be out of the question. By comparison, Lukas Blomqvist is a swimming idol, a record-breaker who wins medals as easily as breathing, and Scarlett has long been convinced he would never look in her direction—until one fateful night when a mutual friend lets slip that they have something unexpected in common: Scarlett likes to be submissive in the bedroom, while Lukas prefers to take a dominant approach. Now, they both know a big secret about each other, and it’s something neither of them can stop thinking about. It’s Lukas who suggests they have a fling—purely physical, just to take the edge off, so Scarlett can get out of her own head and stop overthinking her dives. Initially, their arrangement is easy to stick to, but the more time they spend together, the more Scarlett starts to realize that what she feels for Lukas is more than physical attraction. Complicating the situation is the fact that Scarlett’s friend Penelope Ross used to go out with Lukas, and the longer Scarlett keeps mum about her true feelings for him, the more difficult it is to keep the situation hidden from another person she really cares about. While Scarlett and Lukas’ relationship does begin as a physical one, their deeper psychological connection takes a little too long to emerge amid all the other storylines, resulting in a somewhat rushed resolution. However, Hazelwood’s latest is proof of the depth and maturity that has emerged in her writing over the years, and it highlights her embrace of sexier, more emotional elements than were present in her original STEMinist rom-coms.
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593641057
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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