An inspiring finale about the strength of women and the bonds of sisterhood.
In the final installment of Allen’s Black Girls Must Die Exhausted series, Tabitha Walker embarks on a journey of motherhood, friendship, and self-confidence.
It’s been three weeks since Tabitha welcomed little Tabitha Evelyn Walker Brown into the world, and motherhood is fixing to be her most daunting job yet. She’s spent the better part of a month cleaning up diaper blowouts and soaking in precious moments with Evie while on maternity leave from her weekend anchor gig at Los Angeles’ KVTV news station. Tabby left the station in a bit of uproar after conducting an unsanctioned live segment, and she’s worried that her job may be on the line. That’s not the only thing worrying her: Three weeks have passed since she refused a marriage proposal from Evie’s father, Marc Brown. Tabby knows he wants to provide for her and their child, but she can’t help having a few reservations about him. Even worse, Marc invited his judgmental mother to stay for a few weeks without consulting Tabby. Luckily, Tabitha’s friends Alexis and Laila always have her back, although Laila’s new business has made her go MIA lately. While Tabby is juggling a newborn, breastfeeding issues, one pushy mother-in-law, a BFF crisis, and a looming engagement, one more giant serving is heaped onto her plate: There’s an opening at the news station for a prime-time slot. Tabitha begins to wonder if it’s possible for her to really have it all or if she will crumble under the pressure. In the last book about Tabitha’s journey, she’s introduced to several stressors that would make anyone sweat, much less the mother of a newborn. Yet Tabitha is surrounded by positive reinforcement and remarkable women, both of which help make Allen’s trilogy a must-read. It’s refreshing to see Tabitha gain confidence over the course of the novel as she navigates being a mother, a friend, a daughter, and a career woman who’s faced with life-changing decisions, and while it’s not seamless, it sure is powerful.
An inspiring finale about the strength of women and the bonds of sisterhood.Pub Date: April 11, 2023
ISBN: 9780063137943
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harper Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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