A haunting story of betrayal and forgiveness that packs an unexpectedly emotional punch.
Huntley’s (We Could Be Beautiful, 2016) second domestic thriller turns its attention to an all-consuming friendship between two middle-aged women—one of whom may not be exactly who she seems.
Newly settled in Kona, Hawaii—part of a last-ditch attempt to save her flailing marriage—Nancy Murphy is desperate to reinvent herself into a new person, an exciting person whose husband did not cheat on her with his assistant manager from Costco. That means uncharacteristically dragging herself to yoga class. “I’d read online that yoga had transformed many peoples’ lives, and I needed a transformation,” Nancy says. She finds it through Ana, a woman so at peace she's a parody of a yoga teacher, and instantly falls under her charismatic spell. Free, unencumbered by children or marriage, spontaneous and spiritual and girlishly fun, Ana is everything Nancy isn’t. And yet they recognize each other as kindred spirits—and soon the two fall into an easy intimacy, soaking in Ana’s hot tub, browsing used bookstores, and eating at hippie health food buffets, circling the island distributing sandwiches to homeless people so they might “create space for better destinies.” With Ana, Nancy has an escape from her old self. “I’m going to call you Nan from now on,” Ana informs her. “Don’t you see how the letters of our names match up perfectly? Nan and Ana! Yin and yang!” But as Nancy becomes ever more absorbed by their friendship, Ana becomes more demanding, dangerously threatening the very foundations of Nancy’s world. As in her first book, Huntley is a keen social observer, empathetic and biting at once. And while the plot itself is somewhat predictable—a familiar cloud hangs over the friendship from the start—the plot is hardly the point. Instead, it serves as necessary scaffolding, a vehicle for Huntley’s gripping psychological portrait of a woman at a personal crossroads.
A haunting story of betrayal and forgiveness that packs an unexpectedly emotional punch.Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-54221-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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