Intriguing and enjoyable, with an engaging female protagonist.
Harold’s historical novel follows an American-expat Civil War widow living in Paris during its heady, La Belle Epoque days.
Anna Kneeland Haggerty Shaw came to Paris with her family close to 20 years ago. Now, in May of 1892, at 56 years of age, she finds herself for the first time totally on her own, no longer responsible for being the dutiful daughter or attentive aunt. It has been almost 30 years since Anna was widowed after barely three months of marriage—her husband Robert Gould Shaw died a hero, shot while commanding the 54th Massachusetts infantry, the Union’s first Black Negro regiment. At the conclusion of a Debussy piano recital, Annie hears a voice calling out her name. It is that of Julia Shaw Greene, Robert’s aunt, who Annie has not seen in many years, even though Julia is also an American expat living in Paris. It is a fortuitous meeting that leads to a close friendship. Julia introduces Annie to Henrietta Reubell’s salon, where wealthy intellectuals and art aficionados mingle joyfully and a bit mischievously with the struggling artists in search of patronage (“she attracts a rather fascinating circle”). Immersed in the buoyant, irreverent crowd, Annie sees the glimmer of a new path she can follow, one which may allow her to express her own artistic talents and participate in the freedoms that Paris has to offer. In Harold’s tender, frothy, and witty novel, populated by an eclectic group of Bohemian artists, Paris itself occupies a prominent role. When Annie learns that her dreaded former mother-in-law intends to visit and (gasp) perhaps move in next door, the humor is kicked up a few notches as Annie and her friends devise ways to shock the old lady into returning to America. Through acerbic social commentary and biting dialogue, the author takes readers on entertaining tours of artists’ studios and one or two dens of iniquity. Elaborate descriptions of the fashions, foods, and lifestyles that made Paris the center of the arts and social rebelliousness of the era are peppered throughout, along with thought-provoking pre– and post–Civil War historical tidbits.
Intriguing and enjoyable, with an engaging female protagonist.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9781578691944
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Rootstock Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.
A collegiate diver and swimmer secretly pursue kink together, and risk falling in love along the way.
Scarlett Vandermeer is struggling. Despite a successful recovery from the injury that almost ended her Stanford diving career, she hasn’t been able to get her head together, and it’s affecting her performance. Plus, she’s trying to stay focused on getting into medical school. A relationship would be out of the question. By comparison, Lukas Blomqvist is a swimming idol, a record-breaker who wins medals as easily as breathing, and Scarlett has long been convinced he would never look in her direction—until one fateful night when a mutual friend lets slip that they have something unexpected in common: Scarlett likes to be submissive in the bedroom, while Lukas prefers to take a dominant approach. Now, they both know a big secret about each other, and it’s something neither of them can stop thinking about. It’s Lukas who suggests they have a fling—purely physical, just to take the edge off, so Scarlett can get out of her own head and stop overthinking her dives. Initially, their arrangement is easy to stick to, but the more time they spend together, the more Scarlett starts to realize that what she feels for Lukas is more than physical attraction. Complicating the situation is the fact that Scarlett’s friend Penelope Ross used to go out with Lukas, and the longer Scarlett keeps mum about her true feelings for him, the more difficult it is to keep the situation hidden from another person she really cares about. While Scarlett and Lukas’ relationship does begin as a physical one, their deeper psychological connection takes a little too long to emerge amid all the other storylines, resulting in a somewhat rushed resolution. However, Hazelwood’s latest is proof of the depth and maturity that has emerged in her writing over the years, and it highlights her embrace of sexier, more emotional elements than were present in her original STEMinist rom-coms.
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593641057
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
