Versatile and best-selling Hoffman's (The Marriage of Opposites, 2015) latest novel is a moving redemption story. A horrific car accident halts the flow of 18-year-old Shelby Richmond's life and leaves her best friend in a vegetative state. Wracked with guilt because she was driving the car when it spun off the road, Shelby suffers a nervous breakdown and ends up in a mental institution, where she is sexually assaulted repeatedly by a sadistic orderly. Finally she escapes this waking nightmare, more damaged than before. Shelby shaves her head and refuses to believe she deserves happiness of any kind. But life won't let her give up. The local boy who sells her weed confesses his love for her, and a mysterious person she thinks of as her angel sends her postcards encouraging her to reengage with the world. So Shelby sets off for New York City, where, to her surprise, she finds friends, both four legged and human, and a second lease on life. In a tale at once heartbreaking and uplifting, Hoffman explores a young woman's recovery from tragedy with sympathy and grace. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Fans of Hoffman's caring and imaginative fiction will be anticipating this well-promoted, book-club-worthy novel.--Huntley, Kristine Copyright 2016 Booklist

Actress Tamblyn, known for playing the title role in the TV series Joan of Arcadia, inhabits Hoffman's story so naturally it is almost as if it was written for her. The novel opens with a car accident involving two high school seniors on a snowy night on Long Island. The accident leaves one of the young women, Helen, in a coma and the other, Shelby Richmond, who was driving the car, seemingly determined to punish herself in perpetuity for what happened to her friend. Tamblyn captures the bleak despair of the novel's opening and then slowly, gingerly, traces Shelby's fledgling attempts to build a life for herself. Sometimes Shelby's early behavior is appalling, but it stems from her self-hatred and survivor's guilt; the challenge for Tamblyn is to depict the raw fury of Shelby's aftermath but also show listeners enough of the character's goodness and humanity that they champion her cause. She portrays Shelby as tough as nails but also achingly vulnerable. She also turns in fabulous interpretations of other characters, particularly of Maravelle, a single mom trying to make ends meet in New York whom Shelby befriends later in life. A Simon & Schuster hardcover. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

WHEN WE FIRST meet young Shelby Richmond, the heroine of Alice Hoffman's latest novel, she's a wounded soul living in self-imposed exile in suburban Long Island. Shelby, we learn, holds herself responsible for a car crash that nearly killed her best friend. After a guilt-fueled suicide attempt and a stay in a mental ward, she now lives in her parents' basement, venturing out only to meet with Ben, her softhearted, Vonnegut-reading pot dealer. When the love-struck Ben persuades Shelby to move with him to New York City, the path to her inevitable redemption begins. "Does no one else see all this pain floating around Manhattan?" Shelby wonders in one of her more solipsistic moments. What's most vexing about "Faithful" is that you're supposed to feel like a monster if you laugh. Hoffman builds Shelby out of trauma and not much else, and her observations suffer from a certain clichéd vagueness. Through Shelby, we learn that "feelings are best left concealed," that "she doesn't even think it's possible for her to smile" and, most egregiously, that "it's true, tragedy can bring you closer or drive you apart." Hoffman might be making a point about the banality of heartbreak, but it's lost in the actual banality. Thankfully, once in Manhattan, Shelby begins to accrue detail and personality. She finds work at a pet store, fills her apartment with rescued dogs and eats nothing but Chinese takeout. She befriends a co-worker, Maravelle, as well as Maravelle's three skeptical and defiant kids. Hoffman adds a few of her trademark magic-realist touches, though they're lighter here than in previous books like "Practical Magic" and "The Probable Future." Shelby's best friend, now comatose, is said to have healing powers, and pilgrims crowd her bedroom to touch her hand. Someone keeps sending Shelby postcards inscribed with messages like "Say something," "Do something," "Want something." Each, of course, is exactly what she needs to hear. But mostly the magic lies in a lack of real-world consequences for Shelby's more reckless lurches toward selfactualization. She confronts the man who's been stalking Maravelle's daughter in a manner that ought to get her killed, but she escapes with a pop on the nose. When she liberates a menacing "monster" dog from its junkyard captivity, it's tamed in an instant, as smitten with Shelby as we're meant to be. "Faithful" is most successful when describing the everyday details and habits of Manhattan: the supervisor who runs the pet store "as if it's a small, corrupt country," the takeout deliveryman "who always seems in the grip of some great and quiet sorrow." If you can hang up your disbelief and surrender to the soft-focus glow, the book becomes enjoyable, satisfying even, as the mystery of the postcards is solved and the catharses arrive right on schedule. In the end, it feels as harmlessly saccharine as an after-dinner mint, with one exception - the disclosure, early in the book, that when Shelby was in the mental hospital she was raped repeatedly by an orderly. It's a terrible choice on Hoffman's part, seemingly made only to increase Shelby's misery. As though Hoffman realizes she's overreached by adding this dark twist, it's mentioned again only a handful of times before it vanishes like a bad dream. One wonders why it wasn't edited out completely. It's the only truly jarring misstep in this feel-good confection of mystical postcards and amiable one-eyed dogs, in which every tragedy ends in uplift and you can see the grace coming for miles. HELENE WECKER is the author of a novel, "The Golem and the Jinni."

When Shelby and her best friend, Helene, are in a car accident, Shelby is the lucky one. Or so everyone tells her, since Helene is now in a coma. Shelby's guilt becomes all-encompassing, and she spends years in a dark place, wanting to self-harm and unable to leave her parents' basement. It's a very slow process, but eventually, Shelby heals enough to try a new life in New York City with a boy from high school. Caught in a state of arrested development because of her guilt and low self-esteem, Shelby ultimately learns to forgive herself and love again. Teens will love Shelby-her angst will feel real and honest, while her journey to absolve herself is understandable and sincere. Hoffman writes coming-of-age novels well, and her inclusion of a little bit of magic (or miracle, if you're a believer) fits the urban setting and Shelby's neuroses perfectly. While a tale of redemption, this slim title also tackles family relationships, first jobs, first loves, first apartments, and breakups. Readers who push through the sad opening chapters will cheer for Shelby as she rescues abused dogs and finds herself. VERDICT For Hoffman's fans as well as those who enjoy redemptive stories.-Sarah Hill, Lake Land College, Mattoon, IL © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Hoffman takes a break from writing about distant places and the distant past (Marriage of Opposites, 2015, etc.) to explore the psyche of a young Long Island woman afflicted by survivor guilt.In her own mind, Shelby Richmond stole her best friends future. Two years have passed since the car accident that left Helene tethered to a feeding tube in her childhood bedroom just before she should have graduated from high school, a mute but lovely shadow of her former badass self, a magnet for pilgrims hoping to be cured by touching her hand. This cringeworthy spectacle sometimes causes Shelby to ponder whether it's better or worse that her friend lived. Mainly, though, Shelby focuses on enacting her own penance for being physically and cognitively intact (the jurys out on emotionally): by shaving her head, sleeping like Dracula in her parents basement, skipping college, and sometimes cutting herself in places she thinks wont be detected. Miserable as things are for Shelby, Hoffman provides readers as well as her deeply wounded heroine some quirky human anchors to make her journey back to higher functionality more than bearable, even entertaining: e.g., an anonymous Samaritan, apparently male, who sends her hand-drawn postcards bearing get-well messages in the form of visual and verbal riddles. And there's black-humored levity in Shelbys snarky exchanges with Ben Minkher marijuana source who's grown from high school geek to handsome striver and brings her Ray Bradbury books to read. I believe in tragedy, she tells him apropos of Helenes faithful flock. Not miracles. Though bald and self-medicating, she grasps that moving in with Ben while he attends pharmacy grad school (!!!) at NYU might be a better direction. While shacking up with Ben, she finds a job cleaning cages at a gritty pet store. The silver lining is her co-worker Maravelle, a single mom of three young kids, whose lack of self-pity over her bad luck with men ("See a charmer and you're bound to see a snake nearby") attracts Shelby. Perhaps theres a way these two bruised women can help each other? Ultimately, though, its Sue Richmond, Shelbys mom, who proves to be the real saint of the narrativeher unobtrusive shaping of Shelbys better instincts is one of the most touching aspects of the book. With Hoffman, its a safe bet deus ex machina or mild enchantment is going to enter the plot. By the time it does, however, Shelbys well on her way to recalibrating. She couldnt save her friend, but Hoffman endows her with the inner weather to save herself. A novel full of peopleflawed, scarred, scareddiscovering how to punish themselves less and connect with others more. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Shelby lives under a cloud of guilt from the auto accident that put her best friend into a vegetative state approximately a decade earlier. Over the course of this coming-of-age novel, listeners experience Shelby's growth as she finds love, makes peace with her parents and herself, accepts that she had no control over the accident, and learns to accept fate. Accurately capturing fear of life and its changes, as well as the need many young people experience to "find" themselves, Hoffman's (The Dovekeepers) memorable story is fraught with emotions and personal growth experiences. Amber Tamblyn conveys both Hoffman's story and Shelby's emotions, fears, and uncertainties as she struggles to overcome her survivor's guilt and growing pains. The consistent volume and clear background contribute to Tamblyn's dramatic, accent-free, nicely paced reading. VERDICT Will appeal to older teens and adults interested in dramatic, personal development stories. ["Throughout the novel, there are instances of coincidence, synchronicity, and strong symbolism from both pop culture and world religion. As long as readers are willing to suspend their disbelief, these magical elements will draw them into Shelby's world": LJ 9/1/16 review of the S. & S. hc.]-Laurie Selwyn, formerly with Grayson Cty. Law Lib., Sherman, TX © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.