A quirky novel perfect for rom-com fans and readers looking for a little sweet escapism.
A Columbus, Ohio, woman who became the unwitting inspiration for a new rom-com struggles with all the ways her real life doesn’t seem destined for a happily-ever-after ending.
At almost 30 years old, Chloe Sanderson doesn't have the life she expected. Her mother disappeared from her and her twin brother Milo’s lives when they were just 10, and her father, whom she loves, was too shell-shocked to handle the responsibility. So Chloe, just a child herself, took care of them. Now she's trying to finish her college degree online, working in a coffee shop that she loves, and spending almost all her money and mental energy on her dad, who now has Alzheimer’s disease and is staying at an assisted living residence where Tracey, her ex-girlfriend, works. She's in constant turmoil about her need to run to her dad's side every time Tracey calls when every iota of her being just wants ignore the demands on her time and instead start a relationship with her boss, Nick, who's very interested in her. Her should-I/should-I-not anguish is significantly complicated by the fact that her best friend, Annie, has written a soon-to-premier rom-com, Coffee Girl, that imagines a world where Chloe and Nick (well Zoe and Rick) do get together. Fans of author Winfrey’s previous book, Waiting for Tom Hanks (2019), will recognize Chloe, Nick, and Annie, though this time Chloe is the heroine and Annie the sidekick. Winfrey excels at upending typical romantic comedy tropes, and Chloe is a complicated, realistic, believable character. Sitcoms, movies, and music are all heavily referenced in the story; fans of the TV series New Girl will no doubt love this book.
A quirky novel perfect for rom-com fans and readers looking for a little sweet escapism.Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-984804-04-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
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
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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