Himes explores what could have been in this charming debut novel.
A stressed-out wife and mother finds that appreciating her life will require a fresh perspective.
Abbey Lahey is an overworked mother of two who feels her identity slipping away. Her relationship with her husband, Jimmy, a landscaper, isn’t as strong as it once was, and being on the “mommy track” at her PR firm means she no longer represents the most coveted clients. Now relegated to managing an exterminator’s account, she longs for a life just a little more glamorous. While flipping through a copy of Town & Country, she finds a photo of Alexander Collier van Holt, a man who asked her out on a date many years earlier. Discovering that he's now both rich and gorgeous, she begins to fantasize about the turn her life could have taken if she had only said yes to that date. Abbey often longs for a taste of the high life, and a few weeks earlier she had spent almost $600 on a Marc Jacobs purse she couldn’t afford. Unfortunately for Abbey, when Jimmy finds the bill, he demands that she return the bag. Under duress, she complies, though her frustration leads to clumsiness, and she takes a tumble over the escalator railing at Nordstrom. When she wakes up, she is no longer Abbey Lahey, but Abbey van Holt, thrown smack in the middle of the dream life she had imagined. Despite the money, designer goods, and handsome husband, Abbey soon sees fractures in the facade of this new alternate reality. While Mrs. Lahey packed a few extra pounds, Mrs. van Holt is fit, pampered, and nothing like Abbey. Could a different choice all those years ago really have changed her that much? Throughout the novel, Abbey longs to find herself in the midst of this glittering new life.
Himes explores what could have been in this charming debut novel.Pub Date: May 31, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-30573-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Hachette
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
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
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