A slow-starting but often enjoyable supernatural tale of family.
A resident of a haunted house becomes a ghost herself in Banerjee’s sequel to her No. 7novel series.
Priya and Ravi Gupta died in a house fire. Now a spirit, Priya gets to the gates of Heaven but isn’t allowed to stay. She wanders freely on Earth and decides to go to London and watch over her adult children, Sonya and Sunny, who used to be close but can’t stand each other anymore. Priya stays mostly with Sonya, invisibly watching as she sets off on a short trip with her friends to Abingdon, England, to ponder her own future. There, Sonya meets the handsome, charming Randy, a cousin of her recent ex-boyfriend Paul. Paul tells her to stay away from him, but Sonya doesn’t listen; Randy seems sweet, and when Sonya gets tragic news, he flies to India with her to accompany her to a funeral. Meanwhile, Sonya’s determined to figure out how to break a terrible family curse, put there by her Uncle Dev after he performed black magic on a book given to Priya. The only way to put an end to the tragedies plaguing her family is to locate that tome. Meanwhile, the devil is hunting for souls like Priya’s, and the truth about Randy slowly starts to reveal itself. Banerjee’s use of a ghost narrator results in an effectively offbeat and sometimes otherworldly storytelling experience, as when Priya swims in the sea after being cast out of Heaven: “I swirled in eddies that spanned hundreds of miles, rode atop waves, rising, falling, rising, until at dawn, I rolled in off the coast with the roaring breakers….I clung to the weathered rocks, a wisp amidst a bounty of subtle hues.” However, because Priya’s mostly following her daughter’s journey, the narration tends to lack introspection. There are occasional moments of formality that come across awkwardly (“ ‘Oh, come on,’ I said a trifle irritably”), and it takes a while for narrative momentum to build. Once it gains traction, though, it’s an engaging adventure all the way to the cliffhanger ending.
A slow-starting but often enjoyable supernatural tale of family.Pub Date: Dec. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781734728279
Page Count: 316
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 5, 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
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
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