... poignant and quietly powerful ... With so many characters populating the pages, you’d expect to encounter the occasional skimpily drawn one. But Joella impressively balances a cast of thoroughly realized personalities grappling with momentous events ... These characters transform over time, make amends and see one another more honestly and fully. Their evolution is inspiring — and more than a tad hopeful.
Joella's poetic side shines in his moving but never maudlin novel. He captures loneliness, sadness, happiness and anger in all their fleeting hues. He has created a truly intertwined world around the Tylers, portraying their neighbors truthfully yet kindly. From beginning to end, A Little Hope finds the grace of the everyday and homes in on the surprises (both heavy and light) that each day can hold. Life is both painful and hopeful, but in Joella's world, it is blessedly more of the latter.
In his debut novel, Joella has an eye and ear for suburban pathos, highlighting tragedy and growth in equal parts. Exploring new love, the twists and turns of grief, and the steadfast loyalty of soulmates, A Little Hope is narrated by a diverse ensemble of Wharton residents. Joella pays particular attention to the aftershocks of loss in the residents’ lives, ranging from heartbreak and addiction to cancer, but he doesn’t dwell on the maudlin ... [An] immersive, illuminating novel.
The lessons we all must learn—of tolerance, forgiveness and compassion—transform these people as they would transform you and the members of your own family or community. It almost feels like a documentary in its lack of poetry; Joella’s direct writing style doesn’t leave room for soap opera drama. Instead, these are people. People who need people. It may not sound special, but that is precisely what makes A Little Hope a special book ... a breath of fresh air in a world of TikTok books that use escalating plots to entertain their readers.
Tender ... A series of vignettes marked by a sense of connection and community ... The prose can be simplistic, but Joella has a good handle on each of the many characters. Throughout, the overlapping story lines keep readers turning the pages.
The novel’s modest title hints at its low-key emotional register, and with a change in point of view with every new chapter, it exists somewhere in a limbo between a collection of linked stories and a more traditional narrative structure. Joella captures the rhythms of life in Wharton and is skilled at identifying both shifts in the weather and events that mark the passage of time in moments so subtle as to be almost undetectable. Readers who enjoy fiction that reflects the struggles and joys of their daily lives will find much that will resonate here, but perhaps because of its large ensemble cast, the novel never truly connects with the emotional hearts of any of their stories ... Heartfelt stories of the inhabitants of a small Connecticut city don’t add up to compelling drama.
