by Leslie Schnur ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 27, 2004
Schnur’s attempts at humor, alas, are gratingly obvious and annoyingly self-congratulatory, especially when praising Nina...
Awkward foray into romantic comedy depicting a dog walker on New York’s Upper West Side falling in love with one of her (human) clients based on the contents of his apartment.
Nina, an erstwhile copywriter at Random House who burned out on the nasty antics of the publishing world, takes over her friend Claire’s dog-walking business when the aspiring actress gets a part in a TV show. First-timer Schnur, the former editor-in-chief of Dell Publishing and Delacorte Press, provides plenty of cute scenes showing Nina walking her charges en masse and displaying her moral superiority over the pooches’ actual owners, whose apartments she checks out (despite her moral superiority) while picking up the pets. One of Nina’s favorite dogs, Siddhartha, belongs to a lawyer named Daniel. Without meeting him, Nina develops a crush on Daniel based on what she learns from snooping in his apartment. Of course, readers know right off from the description of the apartment that Daniel is actually a shallow yuppie, not worthy of our witty, pretty, and artistically gifted heroine. They might well wonder why Nina doesn’t pick up on this, but that’s okay because the “Daniel” she eventually meets is his identical twin Billy, an IRS agent using the apartment to stake out a suspect: a charming, mysteriously wealthy older woman who happens to be another of Nina’s clients. Billy/Daniel and Nina have immediate chemistry, for no better reason than he’s the sensitive romantic lead Schnur wants us to believe Nina deserves. Although the road to happiness can be rocky when one lover is not whom he claims and the other is a snoop, don’t be surprised when Nina, Billy, and all the supporting characters (except chauvinist pig Daniel) reap love and success.
Schnur’s attempts at humor, alas, are gratingly obvious and annoyingly self-congratulatory, especially when praising Nina and Manhattan.Pub Date: July 27, 2004
ISBN: 0-7434-8207-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
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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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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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