An enjoyable, if uncomplicated, beach read about a novice journalist during wartime.
In this novel, a young woman scores a job as a reporter for a Westchester County newspaper in the waning days of World War II.
The war in Europe has ended, but fighting on the Pacific front is in full force. That is where Marty Gregg’s fiance, Eddy, is stationed, and she hasn’t received a letter from him in several weeks. Meanwhile, with all the young men off to war, Marty has been hired as a reporter for the Port Chester Sentinel. Worrying about Eddy, she finally dozes off to sleep. Suddenly, she is jolted out of bed by the piercing wail of a siren. The Rye, New York, shipyard, which has been producing landing barges for the war effort, is ablaze. With the enthusiasm of a fledgling Lois Lane, Marty rushes to the shipyard. Unfortunately, Ben Bronson, a newbie reporter just out of high school assigned to the Greenwich, Connecticut, desk, has already been to the scene even though Rye is Marty’s territory. Now she must convince her editor, Phil Barrett, to assign her the story. Phil is already disgruntled over having to hire women to fill jobs usually held by men. Over dinner at an Italian restaurant, Phil agrees to let her run with the write-up, but the playboy bachelor has a more nefarious interest in Marty. This is the first adult novel by Tolles, a children’s book author. Tolles’ prose has a vintage charm reminiscent of the era, but it lacks the sophistication of adult fiction. Marty narrates the tale with an innocence and simplicity that are quaint by today’s standards. Despite Phil’s numerous sexual advances, she is slow to fully grasp his intentions. Describing a dinner with him, she says: “We didn’t get off to a good start. ‘Hi, Marty,’ he said when we met and he hugged me right up close. Oh, not good.” Still, the author skillfully evokes the atmospherics of America’s homefront wartime mentality. She introduces a bit of humor when Marty dresses as a man to access the Plains Club for an FBI briefing on the shipyard explosion. And the hunt for the arsonist keeps the narrative engaging.
An enjoyable, if uncomplicated, beach read about a novice journalist during wartime.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62815-915-8
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Speaking Volumes
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bailey hits it out of the park with her latest spicy romance.
Two ambitious athletes plus one fake-dating arrangement—what could go wrong?
Though it’s only his first season for the Boston Bearcats hockey team, Robbie Corrigan has a well-established reputation as a playboy. He’s got major skills on the ice, and he’s also much more likely to love ’em and leave ’em than he is to build any long, meaningful relationships. Naturally, he’s just met the one woman who seems completely resistant to his charm: Skylar Page, a Boston University softball pitcher. When they meet over a friendly Saturday morning baseball game, Robbie instantly makes a poor impression by bragging to his teammates about his latest conquest within Skylar’s hearing. He thinks she’s gorgeous, though, and when he sets his sights on her, he’s surprised that she doesn’t seem to know it. Despite her initial distaste for Robbie, Skylar grudgingly confesses that she could use his help. If they pretend to date, maybe her current crush—her brother’s best friend—will finally sit up and take notice of her in a romantic way. The timing is less than ideal, since Robbie will have to team up with Skylar in the Page family’s latest wilderness competition, but it turns out that Robbie’s willingness to play fake boyfriend stems from some very real feelings. He wants to prove to her that he’s a changed man, and redeeming himself in her eyes starts with making sure she knows that she can really trust him. The latest addition to Bailey’s Big Shots series is a sexy, feel-good romance brimming over with the author’s trademark humor and dirty talk. While Skylar and Robbie’s dynamic doesn’t quite reach the level of enemies-to-lovers—he’s so head-over-heels for her that there’s no room for any real mean-spiritedness—their playful snark doubles as a welcome dash of foreplay in the lead-up to some seriously steamy scenes. Robbie’s efforts to show Skylar that he’s turned over a new leaf also result in some of the book’s best moments, emphasizing his commitment to becoming the type of man he knows she deserves.
Bailey hits it out of the park with her latest spicy romance.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780063380837
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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