A fun, sexy escape.
In this debut romance novel, a woman gets a new lease on life while managing four irresistible men training to become the world’s next singing sensation.
Renowned music entrepreneur Teddy Wilson has a vision that’s going to take the industry by storm: a multinational vocal group that combines pop and opera. But he needs a special kind of woman to manage his four talented, egotistical guys. Teddy’s longtime assistant, Harriet, knows just the person for the job: her niece Annie, a music teacher from Detroit who needs something new after losing her husband to cancer 18 months ago. Wounded, gorgeous, and plucky Annie charms Teddy and his singers, whom she aptly dubs Bel Homme (French for “beautiful man”). And she’s up for the challenge of keeping them focused and happy during a summer of intense rehearsals at Teddy’s estate in England, but she doesn’t anticipate falling in love. Though he won’t admit it, French superstar Gabriel Grenier joined the group for a fresh start, too. Already rich and famous, Gabriel is worn out, uninspired, and lonely. Drawn to each other instantly, Annie and Gabriel fight to control their urges, their pasts, and Teddy’s orders not to mix business with pleasure. Irish’s first book in a planned series delivers on many female fantasies: there’s a dreamy man with a sensitive side who knows how to please a woman (on top of a grand piano!), forbidden love, personal growth, even an all-expenses-paid makeover shopping spree. The story features few surprises and little shock factor in terms of plot (Gabriel’s big secret is far from scandalous), but readers will have fun anyway. Though the book opens with an abrupt, graphic description of Teddy receiving a sexual favor from an employee he’s about to fire, later sex scenes—built up slowly, between a couple worth caring about—are poetic and satisfying. Even Teddy gets a chance to redeem himself through a sweet, age-appropriate romance with Harriet. Readers will look forward to love stories involving Bel Homme’s other three eligible bachelors in future installations of the series.
A fun, sexy escape.Pub Date: May 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-942627-01-2
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Enoch Publications
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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