Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT

Next book

JUST ANOTHER GIRL ON THE ROAD

An informed, imaginative tale that adds some romance to a well-researched war story.

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT

A young woman in World War II France joins an undercover operation in this debut historical novel.

At the start of Kensington’s story, the protagonist, Katrinka, is in a terrifying bind. It is 1944 in Nazi-occupied France and some German deserters have taken her to a home where she is about to be raped. The Germans have killed her Burmese-British mother and her stepfather, an American archaeologist who worked in Switzerland. Katrinka fights off an attacker and flees and is soon rescued by Wolfe Farr, an American sergeant. Farr is part of Operation Jedburgh, a combined British, American, and French mission to aid the Resistance. More than that, Katrinka’s father, Remi Amparo, is a Portuguese sea captain who is about to deliver plastique (plastic explosives) to the Jedburghs. When Farr takes Katrinka back to meet the others, she is surprised to see Wills Nye, a Briton who used to work on Amparo’s ship and now is with the Jeds. Nye wants Katrinka to retrieve the plastique from her father’s vessel, even though the assignment is outrageously risky. She agrees, but demands Farr accompany her. On this and subsequent undertakings, she wrestles with many dangers and lingering demons, and a growing attraction to both Nye and Farr, which all freely act on. While the end of the war is tantalizingly close, Katrinka travels to Asia to find her true soul mate. Kensington’s breezy novel tackles a captivating aspect of World War II, the parachuting guerrilla warriors that constituted Operation Jedburgh. The provocative story has a die-hard survivor as its heroine, described by Nye in this way: “She had an instinct for survival, naïve bravery, and a rather wild, almost savage unpredictability that was perfectly suited for the job.” The sequence of events, largely between D-Day and VE Day, is well-plotted and often exciting, with the international cast fitting in seamlessly with historical events. This is also a love story with no shortage of sexual encounters; in fact, there are probably a few too many. But the book never loses its seriousness about the war, with a harrowing section in London serving as an effective reminder of the populace’s suffering.

An informed, imaginative tale that adds some romance to a well-researched war story.

Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-78901-862-2

Page Count: 327

Publisher: Troubador/Matador Publishers

Review Posted Online: March 27, 2019

Categories:
Next book

THE UNSEEN

A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.

Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.

Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.

A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.

Pub Date: April 7, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Biblioasis

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 26


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


Google Rating

  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating

  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2014


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • Pulitzer Prize Winner


  • National Book Award Finalist

Next book

ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE

Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 26


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


Google Rating

  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating

  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2014


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • Pulitzer Prize Winner


  • National Book Award Finalist

Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.

In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.

Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.

Pub Date: May 6, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014

Close Quickview