The potential for an intriguing mystery is thwarted by sprawling character studies.
Among his mother’s effects, Matt has found a packet of photographs of a boy who looks like him but almost certainly can’t be him. Who is it?
Willett’s (The Christmas Angel, 2011, etc.) latest is filled with slightly eccentric relationships. Milo, the patriarch of a rather patched-together family, lives in the High House at Exmoor with his devoted sister-in-law, Lottie. Their relationship is chaste, yet they understand and support each other as the best of all married couples. Venetia, Milo’s former mistress, has recently been widowed. Estranged from her own family, she is frustrated that Milo has also distanced himself from her, perhaps out of guilt that her husband was Milo’s army buddy. Milo’s difficult ex-wife, Sara, continues to meddle in his affairs, primarily to protect the interests of their son, Nick. In Sara’s eyes, Milo’s fortune could be lost to Matt and Imogen, two children Lottie brought into the family after their father’s death and whose mother has recently died. Yet each of the children suddenly faces crisis. Matt can’t write. Nick has gotten himself into some financial troubles that have strained his marriage to Alice to the breaking point. Arguments about where to move have unmoored Imogen’s marriage to Jules, and Nick’s reappearance has reawakened dangerous feelings. Weighing their dreams against cold reality, everyone converges upon the High House, where the sale of Milo’s Summer House offers salvation. Could its sale pull Nick out of his financial difficulties? Could Imogen and Jules buy it, even though only Imogen wants it? Could it be the place to relieve Matt’s writer’s block? In the midst of all of these personal difficulties, the mystery of the cache of strange photographs gets lost. Consequently, the ominous shadow Lottie’s second sight reveals to her, the shadow standing at Matt’s shoulder, evokes more curiosity than suspense.
The potential for an intriguing mystery is thwarted by sprawling character studies.Pub Date: June 19, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-250-00369-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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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