In Bloom's imaginative romp set in 1939, 11-year-old Eva meets Iris, the older half-sister she never knew she had, after being abandoned by her mother and left on her father's doorstep in Ohio. Colorful events ensue: Iris runs away to Hollywood with Eva to start a movie career, only to be blackballed over a scandalous lesbian affair; the sisters and their father become servants in the home of a Long Island family; Iris sets her romantic sights on the family's cook, Reenie, first scheming to have Reenie's husband arrested as a German spy and then kidnapping an orphan because Reenie wants a child. The book is written from Eva's point of view in a simple, matter-of-fact style, describing the events without emotion. Packard's narration is tailored to Bloom's under- stated writing style: she reads in a cool, neutral voice that perfectly matches the author's tone. But this type of performance turns out to be detrimental to story in the audio edition, creating distance rather than engagement between listeners and the vibrant plot. Instead of an intimate listening experience that draws listeners in, it holds them at arms' length, making it difficult to empathize even when tragedy hits. A Random House hardcover. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

NO AMY BLOOM CHARACTER ever acted out of boredom. Once a practicing psychotherapist, Bloom knows that dire circumstances can drive people to their most compelling extremes. At her best, when she sets these driven souls on a journey across a landscape shadowed by immigration or war, the results can be stunning. "Lucky Us," Bloom's third novel and sixth book of fiction, unfolds from 1939 to 1949, with World War II as the backdrop. The force propelling 18-year-old Iris Acton down the honeysuckle trellis one night in Windsor, Ohio, trailed by her quiet younger half sister, Eva, is ambition. Iris wants to be a star. Her mother is dead and her father steals her money. What could hold her? "My job was lookout," says Eva, 14, and indeed Eva, the primary narrator, is the observant one, the girl who cleans up after her sister, the girl to whom long letters-that-explain-everything are written throughout the book. Iris, on the other hand, is the actor - in many ways. Once in Hollywood, she quickly snags speaking roles in the movies, takes part in an enthralling lesbian orgy and falls in love. But when a photographer catches her and an established actress entwined, the other woman saves herself with a fast marriage while Iris gets blacklisted even from waitressing. She is about to turn 19. Life is over; life has just begun. The plot now twists with the riveting precision of a stunt plane. Iris, Eva and their father, Edgar, all together again, travel from Hollywood to a wealthy household in Great Neck, L.I., where Edgar, once a professor, becomes a butler while Iris, having studied the era's iconic Little Blue Books on the drive east, becomes a governess. As Iris tells Eva, "It's the great thing about the war.... Anyone can be anyone." She then proceeds to dismantle several lives in her struggle to court the family cook, Reenie Heitmann. And this is where the novel fails to reach the altitudes of Bloom's finest work. Reenie never lifts off the page as an irresistible flesh-and-blood woman, though we're expected to believe she inspires a heart-stopping amount of damage. Iris's motivation feels thin when, in the process of winning Reenie, she wrecks a marriage, declares an innocent man to be a German spy, kidnaps an orphan and leaves his brother behind. Meanwhile, as the story turns another barrel roll, Eva becomes a psychic. Reading tarot cards, she is a lookout only for good news, telling women what they want to hear. (Her "gift" comes from a Little Blue Book too.) "No one who sat at my table," she says, "was encouraged to have a fling, to leave the country, to go in or go out of this world like gangbusters." READERS WHO LOVED "Away," Bloom's second, breakout, novel, were seduced by its heroine, Lillian Leyb, a Russian Jewish immigrant who lived by the hardscrabble motto Az me muz, ken men (when one must, one can). Lillian also did damage, helping, to rob a man and covering up his fatal, if accidental, stabbing - but she wasn't driven by an unconvincing romantic passion. She was seeking her daughter, lost in a pogrom. "Lucky Us" will please readers who relish novels of historical scope, international sweep and cinematic inventiveness. But readers who adored "Away" and Bloom's disturbing debut novel, "Love Invents Us," may not find the same emotional resonance here. There's a lack of depth, for instance, when the mother who abandoned 12-year-old Eva can, years later, only remark, "Call me impulsive. It worked out" - and when Eva reacts to this with a fury unmitigated by even the ghost of yearning. Ultimately, though, Eva blossoms into a woman with a drive of her own, and two short, perfect chapters near the end are deeply affecting. Bloom, who knows redemption as well as anyone, brings her far-flung characters together in a moving final tableau, reminding a loyal reader of her finest work. Amy Bloom The plot of Bloom's novel takes twists and barrel rolls with the precision of a stunt plane. DYLAN LANDIS is the author of a story collection, "Normal People Don't Live Like This." Her first novel, "Rainey Royal," will be published next month.

Starred Review. Bloom's (Between Here and Here) latest is a beautifully written novel steeped in the language and culture of America around the time of World War II. The story begins with 12-year-old Eva being left on her father's doorstep after her father's wife has died. This begins Eva's relationship with her beautiful older half-sister, aspiring actress Iris. Bloom does a wonderful job of capturing the complicated relationship between the girls as they make their way in the world together, striking out on their own to pursue a life in Hollywood, with the hopes that Iris will become a star. The many plot twists are told in a variety of ways, through letters as well as narration both in first and third person, but in Bloom's capable hands, the listener never loses confidence in the story or the voices of the richly textured characters. Alicyn Packard is a perfect match for young Eva, and expertly makes the transition to her adult persona. VERDICT This charming audiobook very well may prove to be among the best of the year. ["Full of intriguing characters and lots of surprises, readers of literary fiction and 20th-century historicals, as well as fans of wacky humor, will find it an excellent choice," read the starred review of the Random hc, LJ 3/15/14.]-Heather Malcom, Bow, WA (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

On a journey from Ohio to Hollywood to Long Island to London in the 1940s, a couple of plucky half sisters continually reinvent themselves with the help of an unconventional assortment of friends and relatives.In 1939, 12-year-old Eva is abandoned by her feckless mother on her father's Ohio doorstep after the death of his wealthy wife. After a couple of years of neglect, Eva and her glamorous older half sister, Iris, escape to Hollywood, where Iris embarks on a promising career in filmuntil she's caught on camera in a lesbian dalliance with a starlet, which gets her blacklisted. With the help of a sympathetic gay Mexican makeup artist as well as their con-artist father, Edgar, who has recently reappeared in their lives, the girls travel across the country to New York and finagle jobs at the Great Neck estate of a wealthy Italian immigrant family. Hired as a governess, Iris promptly falls in love with the family's pretty cook, Reenie, inconveniently married to Gus, a likable mechanic of German ancestry. In this partly epistolary novel interspersed with both first-person and third-person narration, Bloom (Where the God of Love Hangs Out, 2010, etc.) tells a bittersweet story from multiple viewpoints. The novel shares the perspectives of Eva, Iris, Edgar, Gus and Cora, a black nightclub singer who becomes Edgar's live-in girlfriend and companion to Eva. Though the letter-writing conceit doesn't always ring true, since it's unlikely that one sister would recount their shared experiences to the other in letters years later, the novel works in aggregate, accumulating outlooks to tell a multilayered, historical tale about different kinds of love and family.Bloom enlivens her story with understated humor as well as offbeat and unforgettable characters. Despite a couple of anachronisms, this is a hard-luck coming-of-age story with heart. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

*Starred Review* Eva, age 12, knows her father as a sweet man who visits on Sundays, until her mother announces that his wife has died and they'll be paying him a visit. And so Eva arrives at a home she's never seen to live with her father and older half sister, Iris, whom she didn't know existed. Talented, self-involved Iris is a doggedly hopeful performer, winning every local and regional competition in their small midwestern college town before graduating high school and escaping to Hollywood with the embarrassing but brainy and reliable Eva in tow. There is a gossip-column scandal and a cross-country road trip, an abducted orphan and an accused spy, and more than a couple of masquerades, but everything here is fresh; Bloom's cannonballs read like placid ripples. Told partially from Eva's perspective, and with epistolary interludes over the novel's 1939-49 span, Eva's world is one of endless opportunities for reinvention and redemption if one only takes them. With a spare and trusting style, Bloom invites readers to fill the spaces her pretty prose allows, with true and beautiful results. High-Demand Backstory: An extensive marketing campaign and author tour will accompany review attention, to the benefit of fans of Bloom's best-selling historical novel Away (2007).--Bostrom, Annie Copyright 2014 Booklist