A well-paced story about suffering from and finding a way out of an abusive relationship.
In Dee’s novel, a woman contends with an emotionally manipulative husband.
Sweet, shy Emily Grace Davidson doesn’t have many friends, but she “was born with innate confidence and creativity that kept [her] reading and exploring all kinds of fascinating subjects.” She’s a hard worker and dreams of becoming a fashion designer, but she sublimates her career goals and aspirations when she meets the handsome Blake Denton. “I knew he was ‘the one’ ” she narrates—a concept that may have been inspired by the fact that she “grew up on Disney princesses and soap operas.” Their courtship is slow to start, but once they begin dating in earnest, Emily is smitten. There are elements to Blake’s personality, including his deep insecurity, that give Emily pause, but she devotes herself to him entirely and tells him details about her previous relationships. Blake wins over Emily’s entire family, but she finds herself spending more time with him until he’s her sole comforter and confidant. More warning signs appear, which she refuses to heed, including trouble with money, dishonesty, and a lack of sexual intimacy. Determined not to give up on the man of her dreams, she gets pulled deeper into Blake’s emotional manipulations until it’s unclear if she’ll ever be able to dig herself out. Dee dedicates her novel to “every victim and every survivor of emotional abuse,” noting that “It’s time to break the cycle and find the power in our stories.” Over the course of this story, she successfully shows how slowly such emotional abuse can build, as Blake’s seemingly innocuous comments to Emily steadily escalate into terrible financial problems and betrayal. Dee also spends a lot of time detailing how besotted Emily is, and some of these descriptions can feel clichéd, as when Emily notes, “He was hot and sexy, and his gemstone eyes burned right through me.” However, such passages also serve a clear purpose, as they help to make readers understand why it would be so hard for Emily to leave—even as everything in her life starts to go awry.
A well-paced story about suffering from and finding a way out of an abusive relationship.Pub Date: July 14, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 191
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2021
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
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.
Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.
One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593418918
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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