An unconvincing mishmash of violence, spiritual uplift and Hallmark romance.
Cleage returns to the idealized African-American world of Some Things I Never Thought I’d Do (2003), this time combining romance with a noirish criminal melodrama.
Former singing star Blue Hamilton has married Regina, the heroine of Some Things. Now expecting her first child, she has begun to worry when Blue goes off for hours on “business.” Blue’s business is to do whatever it takes to make sure his Atlanta neighborhood of West End remains a little Eden for its black inhabitants. Regina, and readers, must accept that if he sometimes uses deadly means, his cause is righteous. Blue’s driver and chief aide is General, his best friend from childhood. General’s big secret: He was deeply in love with Blue’s mother for 20 years. On her deathbed she promised to send him a sign from the other side. When he sees her birthmark on the back of a local stripper, he has to force himself to begin a relationship with the girl although she feels culturally and ethically challenged. Meanwhile, a young army deserter named Baby Brother moves into the neighborhood and manipulates his way into Blue’s good graces. To make some extra money, Baby also hustles Kwame Hargrove, the secretly gay married son of Precious Hargrove, a rising politician with morals to match her ambition. Baby Brother also pursues General’s new stripper girlfriend. Then Baby Brother turns up dead in Kwame’s loft. A crooked cop who has been trailing Kwame since she stumbled onto his secret life smells blackmail, although she’s convinced that Kwame is no murderer.
An unconvincing mishmash of violence, spiritual uplift and Hallmark romance.Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-48110-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2006
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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