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WILDCAT

AN APPALACHIAN ROMANCE

A riveting unfolding of past traumas and joyful celebration of nature and renewal.

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In Dunn’s novel, a retired English teacher returns to the now-transformed Appalachian Rust Belt town he lived in during his senior year of high school, revisiting the love and loss he experienced a half-century ago.

An unnamed narrator remarks that he feels like a “bloomed-out iris in a patch of Wildcat mayapples” now that he’s has retired to Wildcat, a mining/mill town where “Interlopers are rare, even ones like [him] who lived here for a short time.” He has returned, some 50 years later—after living in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Upstate New York—at the suggestion of an old friend, Dominic Vitali, who informed him of “Wildcat’s magical changes, ones so different from the disastrous ones of the past” and the news that Carolyn Zalewski, the narrator’s first love when he lived in Wildcat during high school, is back in town. The main character, who had a career as an English teacher and writer, describes “Hotel Wildcat, my new home”—a living/dining collective with inhabitants engaged in artisanal activities (mushroom farming, sassafras furniture molding, and so on) and enjoying locally sourced food. He walks around Wildcat, interacting with various townsfolk and locales, including the riverfront where there are “chunks of concrete scattered here and downstream, a result of the time someone blew a hole in the dam.” The narrative eventually details the momentous events at which it hints early on—mine and dam explosions and a mill fire—that, decades before, jolted the town and the narrator’s relationship with Carolyn. The story ends with sightings of ghosts (dubbed “The Shadows”) that linger in the area, and a celebratory community event. 

Dunn appropriately gives his book the subtitle “An Appalachian Romance”; it is indeed a love story, although it’s less about the man and woman at its center and more about the strikingly vibrant world that the author has created. The exact location of fictional Wildcat within Appalachia isn’t revealed, and one can argue that Dunn’s depiction of a modern Rust Belt town as a hub of back-to-the-earth sustainability and artistry is a utopian vision. Still, with his specifics about Wildcat’s new craft-making (who knew sassafras had such uses?), Dunn effectively makes the case that retooling is possible for any town, which makes this book a welcome alternative to the downbeat works that one often sees regarding the region. The novel’s other strengths include how Dunn dramatically shapes the narrative with headline-style punctations; he gives the word “Bang” its own page, just past the novel’s midpoint. His slow revelation of what led to the town’s tragic events is also effective, as when he introduces Carolyn’s brooding brother and the “sickly yellow” interior of her home. At its core, however, this novel is a lovely ode to nature, from a ramps-collecting idyll of young lovers to the “confluence” of the riverfront where “all thoughts and feelings and experiences fail, and it’s upon places like these that The Shadows endure.” This theme culminates in “Lost Surreal Interlude,” a marvelous final section that offers a lightning round of observations of the natural world.

A riveting unfolding of past traumas and joyful celebration of nature and renewal.

Pub Date: June 18, 2024

ISBN: 9798873878420

Page Count: 168

Publisher: Self

Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025

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DEEP END

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

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THE WEDDING PEOPLE

Uneven but fitfully amusing.

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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

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