An engrossing, if overstuffed, tale of heartbreak and forgiveness.
Dark secrets lead to pain, intrigue, and golf in this novel.
It’s 1973 in Charleston, South Carolina, and Eli Atkins is a high school senior with a lot going for him: a loving stepfather and younger brother; a beautiful girlfriend; and an offer to play minor league baseball after graduation. His mother has never shown him much affection because “she saw her ex-husband every time she saw Eli,” but his life is otherwise charmed. Then Eli’s girlfriend is murdered and he becomes the prime suspect. And although Eli’s mother could exonerate him, she coldly informs him that she will not be his alibi. Instead, despite his innocence, she pushes him to flee their home to spare the family further shame. Feeling unloved and unwanted, Eli turns to family friend Mrs. Babcock for help. With the aid of a well-connected, local businessman, the shrewd Mrs. Babcock devises a plan for Eli to flee the country and hide in the Bahamas. Eli slowly builds a new life for himself under an alias, but even in a beachy paradise, all he can think of is returning home and clearing his name. When he meets a one-legged Scottish golf pro named Lachlan McGregor and blossoms into a stellar player, things finally start to look up. Lachlan’s gorgeous niece, Rachel, also helps matters. But Eli’s golf talent brings him to the attention of a conniving fraudster, and his new life turns almost as messy as his old one. Will Eli ever be able to go home? In this ambitious tale, Attaway expertly evokes both the Lowcountry’s “moss-covered trees rising up from the swamps and grass islands” and the white beaches of the Bahamas. The many twists and turns of the book’s plot will keep readers engaged, although long sections of unnecessary backstory regarding relatively minor characters, such as the relatives of Mrs. Babcock’s son-in-law, occasionally cause the pace to drag. But for Pat Conroy fans who love golf, Attaway’s absorbing novel will be a hole in one.
An engrossing, if overstuffed, tale of heartbreak and forgiveness.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-7354016-7-6
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Linksland Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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