An interesting concept lacks a compelling main character.
A disgraced publicist seeks a new beginning by agreeing to be a dorm mother at her old boarding school.
Gillian Brodie never imagined herself returning to her sleepy Sonoma boarding school at age 38, but then again, this past year was full of surprises. After she erroneously trusted a client who'd been accused of sexual abuse, Gillian’s successful career as a celebrity publicist shattered. Dubbed “the playboy’s publicist” and approached by other sexual harassers wanting her to represent them, she decided to close her New York City firm and take an offer to be a dorm mother at Glen Ellen Academy—trying to see it “not as an admission of defeat, but as a new beginning.” While Gillian is grateful for the opportunity to return to Glen Ellen, she remains haunted by an older betrayal, this one involving her best friend from school days, Miranda. Gillian and Miranda had both vowed never to act on their romantic feelings for the final member of their trio, Aiden, but then Gillian discovered that her two friends had been secretly dating for months. Despite Gillian’s subsequent Yale education and glamorous career, Aiden was “a kind of bittersweet reminder of the one thing that she’d never gotten to have.” That is, until Gillian learns she’s dorm mother to a girl named Rainbow, whose single father is none other than Aiden. As Gillian navigates being a guardian to several needy teenagers and beginning a new relationship with Aiden, her return to Glen Ellen helps unravel years of trust issues and missed opportunities. Parker’s novel explores second chances in a beautiful setting—the picturesque academy and delectable wine country scenery bring out the best in her writing. Beyond depictions of Sonoma, however, Parker’s novel is disappointing. Gillian’s character never feels fully explained, and when compared to students like pathological liar Bunny or eccentric twins Farrah and Freddy, her personality is dry.
An interesting concept lacks a compelling main character.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4450-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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