While the prose needs further editing, Ronco puts a novel spin on lost love.
A high-stakes tale of boy-meets-girl, etc.
Jack Gage was a handsome, down-on-his-luck kid, born in prison to a mother taking the fall for his deviant, absent father. When Jack was 12, his mother died, leaving him to live with an aunt and uncle in a small seaside town. Shortly after, he meets her, the prettiest girl in school and the one who would steal his heart forever: Patti Cain. When they were both 18, Patti and Jack shared a single kiss, followed by a proclamation: While he’ll always be the one she wants, stability and money come before love. The two went off to separate colleges. Jack became a great golf player and Patti, a millionaire’s wife. Now, 20 years later, Jack is professional gambler, wielding poker and golf as his weapons of choice and nursing a fading hope of ever seeing Patti again. Then, Jack’s old high school nemesis, Van Taylor, appears and makes Jack an offer: help Van hijack business from one of the richest men in Florida—Patti Cain’s husband. Though the odds are stacked against him, Jack will risk it all to see his true love again. Ronco (Elevator Symphonies, 1999) endeavors to combine the finesse of golf and high-stakes intrigue of poker into a story of inaccessible love. While readers may be able to forgive the proliferation of exclamation marks, they might become a bit frustrated with the considerable amount of explication, as well as the play-by-play of every golf hole and poker hand, which renders the plot a bit static. Despite this, Ronco provides a twisty, unpredictable plot, with Jack Gage proving to be a fairly reliable narrator exhibiting devious but understandable intentions.
While the prose needs further editing, Ronco puts a novel spin on lost love.Pub Date: July 9, 2011
ISBN: 978-1463611903
Page Count: 254
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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