A scintillating take on marital and workplace dramas with compelling characters and devilish surprises.
In Goldstein’s erotic novel, three couples confront their true feelings about love and loyalty—and pain and pleasure.
Mild-mannered, introspective Craig Schumacher is an executive at a large company in San Francisco in the late 1990s. His colleagues consider him closer to a priest than a manager, due to his strict vegetarianism, daily yoga, and extreme patience. No one would guess that his reveries often drift to fantasies of bondage and domination; indeed, Craig and his wife, Shoshana, have a relationship that may well shock Craig’s co-workers. When his terse and aggressive direct report, Byron Dorn, observes Shoshana meeting multiple men at a townhouse outside the city, he becomes preoccupied with learning more about the couple’s dirty secrets. Seeing a golden opportunity for advancement, his ambitious wife, Adelle, encourages his spying. Meanwhile, the outspoken, witty Nigel Silver has earned Craig’s respect at work; a plum promotion gets him invited to Byron’s dinner parties, where Nigel’s enigmatic wife, Justine, discusses her work as a mortuary cosmetologist and reveals her attraction to dead bodies. This leads an excited Shoshana to believe that she’s finally found a kinky kindred spirit among all the bland corporate wives. As passions and intrigue develop, the three couples uncover new revelations about one another and about themselves. Over the course of the novel, Goldstein’s precise, elegant prose cleverly takes its time revealing his characters’ secret desires, building suspense for fun to come; Craig muses early on, for instance, that a corporate retreat “unshackled his derisive dark side,” hinting playfully at transgressive twists. Each chapter is structured around what the couples are eating in a given scene, but the real sustenance of the story is the careful attention the author pays to each person’s idiosyncrasies (and in what amount) to six robust, detailed character studies. The dialogue can often feel a bit stale—especially between the conniving Byron and Adelle; however, when readers are alone with each character’s thoughts, the author serves up something delicious.
A scintillating take on marital and workplace dramas with compelling characters and devilish surprises.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780988811652
Page Count: -
Publisher: Deft Heft Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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