An intriguing romance debut that centers class struggles along with the love story.
A woman destined to be a duchess finds herself at the bottom of the ton.
Lady Amelia Crofton, diamond of the ton, is finally getting married, but not to the man she’s been engaged to since childhood. No, rather than becoming Lady Wildeforde, she’s being rushed to the altar with Benedict Asterly, son of a footman and noblewoman—“a mere mister.” Benedict thought he was doing a good deed by rescuing Amelia from her overturned carriage in the middle of a snowstorm, but instead, it appears she has been compromised, and both find themselves trapped in a marriage they do not want, far from London. Benedict does have a grand house, courtesy of his mother, who never recovered from her hasty marriage below her station, so he eschews society in favor of his beloved business building steam engines. Amelia, having been raised to be the wife of a duke, can’t do anything practical, like start a fire or cook. She quickly makes friends with Benedict’s little sister and tries to make herself useful. Indeed, before long, Benedict and Amelia do uncover a shared attraction, bolstered by each discovering the other is more complex and intriguing than they had assumed. And they are each grappling with class tensions: The society Amelia was raised for may no longer want her in their ranks, and the community Benedict tries to support may no longer want him, or any relation of the aristocracy, either. Parish’s cleareyed examination of what life was like outside the Regency beau monde makes this debut romance a welcome addition to the genre, allowing readers the usual glimpse into the fashion and gossip of the time while also exploring how many people worked behind the scenes to make those dinners and hunting parties seem so effortless as well as the combined grievance and gratitude they might feel toward their employers. Amelia and Benedict’s story is a classic marriage-of-convenience tale told well, with a handful of intimate scenes, but the couple's relationship primarily blooms through their growing respect for each other’s abilities. Several charming supporting characters are introduced, and readers will look forward to seeing if Parish is able to use future entries in the series to continue her study of the Regency world across class boundaries.
An intriguing romance debut that centers class struggles along with the love story.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5387-0448-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Forever
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.
A retelling of Pinocchio from Geppetto's point of view.
The novel purports to be the memoirs of Geppetto, a carpenter from the town of Collodi, written in the belly of a vast fish that has swallowed him. Fortunately for Geppetto, the fish has also engulfed a ship, and its supplies—fresh water, candles, hardtack, captain’s logbook, ink—are what keep the Swallowed Man going. (Collodi is, of course, the name of the author of the original Pinocchio.) A misfit whose loneliness is equaled only by his drive to make art, Geppetto scours his surroundings for supplies, crafting sculptures out of pieces of the ship’s wood, softened hardtack, mussel shells, and his own hair, half hoping and half fearing to create a companion once again that will come to life. He befriends a crab that lives all too briefly in his beard, then mourns when “she” dies. Alone in the dark, he broods over his past, reflecting on his strained relationship with his father and his harsh treatment of his own “son”—Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that somehow came to life. In true Carey fashion, the author illustrates the novel with his own images of his protagonist’s art: sketches of Pinocchio, of woodworking tools, of the women Geppetto loved; photos of driftwood, of tintypes, of a sculpted self-portrait with seaweed hair. For all its humor, the novel is dark and claustrophobic, and its true subject is the responsibilities of creators. Remembering the first time he heard of the sea monster that was to swallow him, Geppetto wonders if the monster is somehow connected to Pinocchio: “The unnatural child had so thrown the world off-balance that it must be righted at any cost, and perhaps the only thing with the power to right it was a gigantic sea monster, born—I began to suppose this—just after I cracked the world by making a wooden person.” Later, contemplating his self-portrait bust, Geppetto asks, “Monster of the deep. Am I, then, the monster? Do I nightmare myself?”
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18887-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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