The second installment of Mae’s (Too Cubed Unauthorized: Volume I, 2011) detailed saga of fictional band Too Cubed picks up where the first left off.
Newcomers to this series may have a hard time sorting out the enormous cast, and the lack of recap doesn’t make this a good series entry. Those familiar with the first volume, however, will find the Eight back in form, struggling to break out amid a beautifully drawn background of 1980s pop culture. Success brings all sorts of difficulties, including mob scenes at shows, banishment from clubs, groupies and an unfathomable amount of drugs and alcohol. But the Too Cubed boys weather it all, their faces continually turned toward better days as they learn the ins and outs of the music business. That optimism mutes the gravity of the heroin habits two of the band members develop and how it affects the band’s onstage performances; feeling the pain and seeing the conflict would bond the reader more closely to the various Too Cubed members. Mae knows the music industry and this musical scene, even without the intrusions that remind us that the narrator is a die-hard Too Cubed fan. This sensibility at times allows the author to spend too many pages and too much detail on the band’s shows and, sometimes, conversations that would be better served off the page. The scope and detail involved with this four-volume saga impresses, and the book ends with a signal that the band might be going through bass players the way Spinal Tap went through drummers. Amid the merry fun that Too Cubed carries wherever they go, however, is a truly chilling revelation about one of the band members, a character trait that casts an eerie glow over the band’s eventual demise. Despite its weaknesses, it’s all but impossible to not close the back cover and immediately pick up the next installment.
Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0984598113
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Lonna Mae Enterprises
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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