A tear-jerking romance well suited for fans of complicated family dynamics and unlikely affairs.
A young woman cares for her dying sister and finds herself struggling with romantic feelings for her sibling’s husband in this novel.
When Natasha Boran, the free-spirited misfit of her family, receives word that her sister, Nicky, is dying, she heads immediately from her job in Africa to her hometown of Eminence, Missouri. Natasha, also known as Taz, has been in Congo, working for Doctors Without Borders and trying to forget the rift between herself and her family. Nine years earlier, she found herself falling in love with her sister’s fiance, and rather than destroy Nicky’s future, Taz high-tailed it out of town before the wedding. Although Taz feels she was misjudged and unfairly maligned by Nicky and their parents, when she learns her sister is dying, all sour feelings are instantly forgotten. When Taz gets to Missouri, she moves in with Nicky; her husband, Rafe; and their two young kids. As Taz and Rafe nurse Nicky through her final days, many of Taz’s old feelings for him come rushing back to her. She slowly begins to question whether Nicky might actually be trying to push Taz and Rafe closer to each other. Meanwhile, the sisters’ mother is constantly stopping by the house, berating Taz for her every choice and making emotionally trying circumstances all the more difficult. Told in alternating voices from Taz’s and Rafe’s perspectives, Barker’s story delves deep into the pain the protagonist feels at losing a sibling and her confusion over how to handle her feelings for Rafe. The chapters narrated by Rafe feel more topical, focusing mainly on his attraction to Taz and his struggle to resist his yearslong yearning for her. With angry parents and a terminally ill sibling, there are many intensely emotional moments throughout the tale as well as some surprisingly spicy sex scenes. Reading as both a family drama and a romance, this story tries to accomplish a lot. The result is a sometimes-disjointed narrative in which characters’ emotions flip on a dime. Even so, the relationship between Taz and Rafe feels sufficiently authentic and compelling that readers will keep turning the pages to see how the tale ends.
A tear-jerking romance well suited for fans of complicated family dynamics and unlikely affairs.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-988733-56-2
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A wallowing, emotionally wrenching family drama that leaves little time for romance.
Two people with bad luck in relationships find each other through a popular Reddit thread.
Emma Grant and her best friend, Maddy, are travel nurses, working at hospitals for three-month stints while they see the country. Just a few weeks before they’re set to move to Hawaii, Emma reads a popular “Am I the Asshole” Reddit thread from a Minnesota man who thinks he’s cursed—women he dates find their soulmates after breaking up with him, and the latest one found true love with his best friend! Emma has had a similar experience, which inspires her to DM the man and commiserate. She’s delighted by her witty, lively interactions with software engineer Justin Dahl, and is intrigued when he suggests that if they date each other, maybe they’ll each find their soulmate afterward. Emma upends the Hawaii plan and convinces Maddy to move to Minneapolis for the summer so she can meet Justin in person. The overly complex setup brings Emma and Justin together and the two hit it off, with Justin immediately falling head over heels for Emma. Jimenez then pivots to creating romantic roadblocks and melodramatic subplots centering on each character’s family of origin. Justin’s mother is about to serve six years in prison for embezzlement, which means Justin must move back home to care for his three much younger siblings. Emma was traumatized by her own mother for much of her childhood, left to fend for herself and eventually abandoned in the foster system. When her mother shows up in Minnesota, Emma must face her traumatic childhood and admit that she has prioritized her mother’s well-being over her own. There is little time devoted to Emma’s painful efforts to heal herself enough to accept Justin’s love, which leaves the novel feeling unsatisfying.
A wallowing, emotionally wrenching family drama that leaves little time for romance.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781538704431
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Forever
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
