A powerful, emotionally textured winner.
A divorced wedding-dress designer tries to extricate herself from her ex-husband’s new life by moving from Manhattan to her suburban hometown, just in time to see her sister’s marriage rocked by a sexually graphic text.
Ever since Jenny’s husband, Owen, suddenly decided he didn’t love her anymore, she’s felt a little unmoored, especially since he hasn’t actually walked out of her life but only moved her to the best friend column. Confusingly, he's also acquired a new wife who adores Jenny, and they're having a baby, which Jenny desperately wanted to do but Owen was never ready for. Moving back to her hometown, the charming New York suburb of Cambry-on-Hudson, takes her back to her roots and closer to her family, since her mother and sister still live there. She’s excited to start her new life, separate from Owen and with an elegant storefront and workshop where she can design and create her signature wedding dresses. But as soon as she arrives, her sister, Rachel, discovers a sext on her husband’s phone, which puts her previously idyllic marriage in jeopardy. Rachel has never wanted anything but to be married with children, and her beautiful triplets, handsome husband, and stay-at-home life are the culmination of her lifelong dreams. But when it looks like Adam is cheating, her world is rocked. At first invested in saving the marriage, Rachel begins to resent Adam’s long-suffering attitude when she doesn’t forgive him—and get over it—right away, especially when it becomes clear that she can’t trust him anymore. Jenny and Rachel must navigate their conflicted emotions and search their hearts to decide what they really want when their expected futures go off the rails. Romance star Higgins shifts smoothly and poignantly into women’s fiction with this emotionally compelling story, and she brings her ability to create affecting heroines to this new genre. With a secondary cast of characters who buoy an already perceptive study of love, marriage, sisterhood, and loyalty, Higgins delivers.
A powerful, emotionally textured winner.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-373-78497-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harlequin
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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