Lively, fluid, disappointingly shallow.
From Oprah author Cleage (What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day . . . , 1997, etc.), a romance steeped in black feminism with a dollop of spiritual mysticism.
Two years ago, Regina Burns slid into drug addiction after her fiancé, Son, dropped her at the behest of his powerful mother and her employer, the Atlanta-based motivational speaker Beth Davis, whose cause is registering black women to vote. Regina’s now successfully completed rehab but needs $30,000 to save the family home in Washington, DC (why a house that’s been in the family for three generations has a mortgage is one of the little nagging inconsistencies typical here). Meanwhile, Son, dedicated to motivating men to act responsibly, has died in the World Trade Center attacks. How can Regina refuse her old nemesis Beth’s job offer when it not only pays exactly the money she needs, but also entails arranging the transfer of Son’s papers to Morehouse College in a grand ceremony? Before Regina leaves for Atlanta, her aunt Abbie shares her prophetic vision of what lies in Regina’s future: in particular a blue-eyed man she’ll marry. And guess who Regina meets on her first morning: Blue Hamilton, a former singer turned neighborhood savior/benefactor/vigilante, whose eyes are startlingly blue. Blue quickly recognizes Regina as the woman warrior he disappointed in a previous life as emperor of a powerful black nation. Regina moves into his well-appointed apartment house, makes lovely friends who dress beautifully, live graciously and eat delicious food. Lip service is paid to a plot involving political intrigue, Son’s love-child, and some bad guys trying to reintroduce violence into the neighborhood Blue has cleaned up, but although Regina never misses an opportunity to talk about black and female empowerment, the world that’s described in loving detail is almost fairy-tale perfect. Since Cleage never quite confronts the murky morality of Blue as a black Dirty Harry, there are few bumps along Regina’s happy romance trail.
Lively, fluid, disappointingly shallow.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45606-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2003
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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