New York attorney Heller’s second novel (The Love Wars, 2013) is a triumph of witty dialogue and characters as true to life...
The prodigal daughter returns after 20 years, but the happy Reinhardts aren’t sure what to do with her gloomy presence in this sly fiction about families.
Paige is a bit ambivalent about the big news—Sloane is coming to Manhattan for a visit. She hasn’t had contact with her older sister in two decades, since Sloane ran away from a ritzy rehab at 16. Mother Vanessa is guardedly optimistic that they may be a family again, while father Frank is treating the event as he does most: in a state of genial oblivion. Paige’s husband, Dave, has weightier concerns—his law firm has suspended him for a few weeks, and they (or he) won’t say why. For a striving workaholic, this is a death sentence, but Paige’s response is heavy on suspicion and light on sympathy. (How embarrassing for her, considering that she’s a therapist.) When sullen Sloane arrives, she has little interest in reconnecting with her parents, but Paige she likes. And Paige is shocked to meet Sloane’s traveling companion, fiance Giovanni, who is charming and bright, and their little dog, Bandito, who accompanies them as they visit chic eateries for Sloane’s travel blog. The myth of Sloane encompassed so much catastrophe that Paige is a bit surprised to befriend a fairly normal, if occasionally moody, real person. Begging out of their summer outings, Dave becomes increasingly distant, and Paige is convinced he’s involved with some illegal shenanigans. Paige hires Giovanni’s best friend, Percy (she calls him the Adonis), to use his skills as private investigator to ferret out the truth—though she won’t be happy when she gets it. Thankfully, she now has her big sister’s shoulder to cry on.
New York attorney Heller’s second novel (The Love Wars, 2013) is a triumph of witty dialogue and characters as true to life as your best friends.Pub Date: June 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-451-41624-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: New American Library
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
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
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