A light addition to the adventures-in-Paris genre offers cozy fun to fans of travel fiction and tender love stories.
Personal discovery pairs well with French gastronomy in Almquist’s novel about the power of friendship and the thrill of second chances.
Around 2007, after her daughter has left home, Bostonian Jane Longworth is shocked to discover that her husband doesn’t share her dream of traveling the world together. She takes an impulsive trip to Paris alone, where she befriends two other women: Englishwoman Fiona Braxton and Véronique Moreau. Their friendships, along with the magic of the French capital, help each woman grow personally and professionally. Véronique’s career at gourmet food chain store Bon Gout takes off as she oversees the opening of a London branch; she and her husband, Jean-Pierre, work through their differences about how to balance their professional ambitions with their desire to start a family. Fiona, who’d been consumed with caring for her dying mother, slowly lets go of the guilt that keeps her working at her family’s factory; she tentatively pursues a job with Véronique’s company and a relationship with Emily Spenser, a very supportive academic. Jane follows her passion for food, enrolls in cooking school in Paris, and begins a romance with Bernard Dubois, a devastatingly handsome and charming chef. Long discussions and bonding sessions between the three women are interspersed with pleasurable, if familiar, descriptions of the sights and tastes of Paris (“the tang of the tarragon and the rich buttery taste of the bearnaise”). The three women at the center of the narrative are sympathetic and relatable, and it’s easy to cheer on their joys and successes. As the story moves along, there’s a certain repetitive simplicity in the author’s belief that the City of Lights can solve any problem. Still, Almquist is perceptive about the desires and fears of women at various stages of their lives.
A light addition to the adventures-in-Paris genre offers cozy fun to fans of travel fiction and tender love stories.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2023
ISBN: 9780985262464
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Cafe Au Lait
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
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
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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