A Place of Hope

Jacobs’s vapid novel follows elderly but spry Emily Mattison through a series of improbable events that lead up to an equally bland confrontation. Emily tumbles down some stairs and knocks herself addled. Her dastardly nephew, having learned that Emily has just inherited a distant cousin’s wealthy estate, employs a few lies and bribes to get her committed to a geriatric ward for patients with dementia. She falls improbably in love at first sight with her fellow patient Chad, also locked in the ward against his will and apparently without cause. Their completely uneventful escape precedes a handful of nonchallenges that the heroes fret over before effortlessly overcoming. Though the tale is billed as a “mature romance,” there is very little actual romancing, and both the plot and the writing strike a paradoxically juvenile tone. (June)