Weisberger’s third effort (Everyone Worth Knowing, 2005, etc.), with the requisite girls’ nights out and disappointing men,...
Three single gals on the cusp of turning the big 3-0 shake up their romantic lives and deal with the consequences.
That Adriana, Emmy and Leigh have remained close since college is a testament to the strength of their bond, since personality-wise they could not be more different. Leigh is a neurotic book editor, Emmy is a financially struggling cooking aficionado and Adriana is a Brazilian knockout living off her rich parents in a swanky penthouse. After serial-monogamist Emmy is suddenly dumped by her longtime beau Duncan (for the personal trainer she hired for him), Adriana insists that the only way Emmy can get over him is by having torrid affairs with foreign men. Easy for the gorgeous Adriana to say. Emmy counters that if she can “slut out” then unrepentant man-eater Adriana has to, for once in her life, have a committed relationship. Let the games begin! Well, at least for Adriana and Emmy. Leigh, for her part, has a job she loves and a “perfect” boyfriend, hunky sportscaster Russell. Or is he perfect? When he proposes, she knows she should be happy, but she instead finds herself getting tangled up with bad boy novelist Jesse Chapman, who happens to be married. Meanwhile, Emmy, courtesy of her new job scouting restaurant locations, embarks on her erotic adventures, while Adriana nabs a slightly dorky big-time Hollywood director she struggles to remain faithful to. She also meets a magazine editor who, impressed by her effortless ways with men, gives Adriana her own advice column, “The Brazilian Girl’s Guide to Man Handling,” which sounds a lot like a sexed-up version of The Rules. The narrative is choppy (the book would have benefited from more editing), and the characters’ obsession with youth, as well as their displays of jealousy and cattiness, are tiring.
Weisberger’s third effort (Everyone Worth Knowing, 2005, etc.), with the requisite girls’ nights out and disappointing men, has some well-observed passages—and Adriana is a hoot—but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, many times.Pub Date: June 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4165-9019-4
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2008
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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