by Sarah Pinneo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 31, 2012
Entrepreneur mom struggles to balance the demands of her growing business with the needs of her young family.
Making healthy frozen organic food for finicky toddlers, Julia’s Child fills a niche that its founder, Julia Bailey, truly believes should be filled. A nutrition-obsessed former Wall-Streeter with two little boys, she runs her tiny operation out of a shared kitchen in Brooklyn with one full-time employee, and a slightly sketchy storage arrangement with a Mr. Pastucci and his Sons of Sicily Social Club. She also owns a small organic “farm” in Vermont where she hopes to source her own ingredients—someday. Counting on the support of her laid-back husband Luke, and their sweet-natured Scottish nanny, Bonnie, she is able to make her life work, barely. That all changes after an appearance on a morning talk show gives Julia and her signature savory baked “muffets” all the visibility they can handle. Soon after, Whole Foods comes-a-calling with a trial offer, forcing Julia and her devoted assistant Marta (a single mother fresh off welfare) into a punishing schedule. Add to that a make-or-break trade show, a website to be built on the fly and a nasty neighbor mom who wants to ban Julia’s kids from their apartment building’s playroom, and it is clear something has to give. Enter GPG, a global food conglomerate interested in purchasing Julia’s company. What they offer seems too good to be true. So is it? And what will she have to give up in return? Peppered with real recipes and the kind of convincing details expected from a food writer, Pinneo’s debut novel uses a pleasantly frenetic pace to move along a fairly vanilla story line.
Foodie take on I Don’t Know How She Does It.
Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-452-29731-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2011
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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