A fascinating and sexy heroine sets this romance novel with a difference alight.
In Texier’s novel, a woman seeks love, romance, and a connection to her former self in the world of dating apps.
Eve is a 62-year-old French woman living in New York. Long divorced from David, her ex-husband and the father of her two daughters, Eve finds herself dipping her toe into online dating. She matches with younger men, receiving many messages until one from Jonah, aged 37, stops her in her tracks. Eve and Jonah embark on an uneven love affair that oscillates between being adoring and distant, with questions about age, careers, and maturity roiling at its center. Readers are often hard-pressed to find unapologetic, fulfilled, mature female leads in fiction; Eve, as a character, is a refreshing antidote to the all-too-frequent erasure of older women in the media, one who delights in sex, friendship, and travel. Texier does not make her too self-assured; Eve is confident, but she still suffers the pitfalls of modern dating and an uncertainty that often calls into question her marriage to David and her other serious, long-since-ended relationship with a man named Vadik. Eve declares passionately, with great resonance, “I didn’t aspire at all to a life without desire. Wouldn’t life be dreary without us putting a spell on each other?” While Texier’s message is welcome, the novel’s vignettelike approach to storytelling occasionally feels a little too much like a stream-of-consciousness ramble—not quite the voyage of discovery the narrative was perhaps intended to be. The men in Eve’s life often loom like shadows despite her independence, which makes the ending of the story feel not as convincing as readers might hope. Still, the meandering narrative reminds readers, quite bracingly, that women above the age of 50 are not fading into the twilight of their lives—they’re still discovering themselves.
A fascinating and sexy heroine sets this romance novel with a difference alight.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9798988282914
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Itna Press
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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