by Emily Giffin ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 14, 2005
Reads, overall, like a rehash—however amusing—of Borrowed. Giffin’s next had better be Something New.
Airhead antagonist gets her own novel in Giffin’s follow-up to Something Borrowed (2004).
Previously, Rachel took center stage, but the point of view shifts here to Darcy, who catches her fiancé, Dexter, hiding in the closet of Rachel’s Manhattan studio. Dex has just dumped Darcy mere days before their wedding, and Darcy expected sympathy, not betrayal, from maid-of-honor Rachel (see Carrington, above). Darcy and Rachel have been symbiotic friends since grade school, even moving together from Indiana to New York, Rachel to attend NYU Law and then work for a blue chip firm, Darcy to work in P.R. In the gal-pals’ lifelong competition, Darcy, the prettier and less ethical, has always trounced the allegedly smarter Rachel. (Rachel even turned 30 first.) Darcy had strayed from her own engagement, going off with Dex’s groomsman Marcus, by whom, she learns, she’s pregnant. Darcy and Marcus attempt a relationship—with disastrous results. Her superficial P.R. colleague Claire deserts her as glitz-spoiling single motherhood looms, and Darcy ends up in London, bunking with another grade-school chum, Ethan, now a novelist and architectural writer. Rachel’s previous visit with Ethan is grist for more Borrowed backstory: Ethan confesses to Darcy that Rachel and Dex were an item long before the closet confrontation. Ethan, impatient with Darcy’s vanity and indifference to prenatal care, scolds her, whereupon she sets out to reform her shallow goals. But things still come too easily to her, and consequently she experiences little meaningful struggle or other interesting conflict. Almost immediately upon arrival in London, she meets all new girlfriends and attracts a caring, rich and handsome doctor. Ethan warms to her when she reveals she’s carrying twins, and the two rapidly—too rapidly—learn the real meaning of love and friendship. Unfortunately, Darcy doesn’t succeed either in shedding her stereotype as shopaholic sybarite or in sustaining a novel of her own.
Reads, overall, like a rehash—however amusing—of Borrowed. Giffin’s next had better be Something New.Pub Date: June 14, 2005
ISBN: 0-312-32385-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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