RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewThis resulting quiet but satisfying novel about a long, hard summer expands her original raw, exquisite portrait of a girl in crisis into a broader examination of American adolescent anxiety and grief, contextualized by devastating global conflict ... Not every great short story is the seed of a great novel, but Kenny by and large succeeds. This suicide is far from the only tragedy in the book, which even so never veers toward the melodramatic. Instead, Kenny reveals, with a clarity so delicate it is sometimes painful, the human reaction to trauma ... Though Kenny offers little exposition about the era, her austere landscapes and careful attention to color and light evoke the paintings of Andrew Wyeth or Edward Hopper, or the poetry of William Carlos Williams, suffusing the book with a midcentury mood throughout.
Kristin Hannah
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewFolks don’t just have descriptive nicknames in Hannah’s Alaska; they have a tendency to use bumper-sticker-like slogans in everyday conversation ... Kristin Hannah has clearly found a commercial sweet spot, sticking to the ever-popular themes of young love, family drama, loss and redemption, but giving her novels a literary boost by placing them in historical settings ... But the tidy summaries Hannah often provides for her complex subjects aren’t needed, given her admirable storytelling skills. We’ve witnessed Leni’s growing discernment; we don’t need the book-club-ready clarifications that accompany too many scenes.
Stuart Nadler
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewStuart Nadler has successfully braved [a] potential minefield in order to bring us the wonderfully authentic Olyphant women ... the most memorable moments examine the intricacies of familial love — the bonds between mothers and daughters, men and women, boys and girls ... carefully rendered, unpretentious and always with the reader’s satisfaction on the front burner.
