Yesterday's Sun

February 4, 2013
Brooke's debut novel explores familiar themes of motherhood and sacrifice, with a bit of time travel thrown in for good measure. Recently married Holly and Tom have moved to an old cottage in the countryside. Tom is ready to have kids, but Holly remains unsure. Enter an ancient Aztec moondial. Hidden in the overgrown garden, the device allows Holly to see into the future on the night of a full moon. To her horror, she awakes in an alternate future reality where she has died giving birth to a baby daughter for whom she feels an instant, primal love. The rules of the dial are elucidated by a kindly village neighbor and Holly learns that in order to save her own life, she must sacrifice another, i.e., she must give up (not conceive) her daughter. This premise imparts a welcome urgency to the novel and the prose comes fluently to Brooke, who propels her reader urgently through the twisting plot, though the characters lack a certain psychological depth. The playful banter between Holly and Tom, in particular, rings false and the plot is somewhat predictable. Nevertheless, this is perfectly enjoyable and suspenseful light reading.

November 15, 2012
Brooke's novel, set in the countryside near London, captures the heartbreaking dilemma of a woman who must choose between saving her own life and that of her unborn child. Holly is an artist who spent her childhood longing to get away from her parents--a drunken, abusive mother and a distant, uninvolved father. Once both are dead and she is on her own, she meets the man of her dreams, Tom, a television journalist from a close-knit family. When they purchase the gatehouse of a large, burned-down estate, Tom tries to talk Holly into starting a family. She isn't sure about becoming a mother, especially when her own was so terrible, but slowly starts to consider his proposition when she has an otherworldly encounter with what turns out to be an ancient "moondial" in the couple's garden. In this encounter, Holly sees the daughter she will have and learns she will also die delivering her. After meeting and befriending Jocelyn, who once lived with her own family in the same house, Holly discovers that the older woman has had a similar experience with the mysterious stone. Confiding in Jocelyn, Holly discovers her dilemma is even worse. Holly knows she must find a way around the moonstone's death sentence or she will never live to see her precious baby. Although the plot shows promise and creativity, and Brooke delivers a solid yet fanciful storyline, the overall execution is clumsy. The book is riddled with cliches: Holly, Tom, Jocelyn and the rest of the book's characters never simply say anything; in Brooke's world, they gurgle, they beam, they gush, they whisper, they sob and they wink, while wading through buckets of adverbs and torrents of sugary dialogue. The innovative, quirky plot and author's old-fashioned overwrought style will appeal to some readers, but others will find the syrupy prose overwhelming and wish the book had been subjected to a more strenuous edit.

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January 1, 2013
Holly Corrigan's death is foretold early in this limited, occasionally charming novel; indeed, she knows of it herself well in advance. Stumbling upon a moondial in her new garden, she is able to see a future in which she dies in childbirth. She must then choose to either die or prevent the birth of a child she comes to love in her visions. This seems a static and unpleasant premise from the get-goand it isso it is a happy surprise to find that, despite the premise, Brooke's humble, engaging prose is enough to propel one through a good portion of the book. Holly and Tom are a likable pair, and her investigation of the dial's magic, as well as her emotional progression, is initially interesting. Eventually, though, her vacillations become tiring and the book becomes suffocating, since it consists chiefly of these internal movements. Its weaknesses are more evident the longer it is drawn out, with characters and relationships beginning to feel flat and the ending a formality, though Brooke does have a few twists up her sleeve.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)