The men get the short end of the stick, but women looking for a steamy, gossipy beach read will find it right here.
The desperate lives of rappers’ wives throw a veteran hip-hop journalist for a loop.
Dishing the dirt on the world of famous rappers comes naturally to longtime entertainment journalist and biographer King (co-author, Original Gangster, 2010, etc.), who unveils some wild stories for her fiction debut. King’s doppelgänger is hip-hop journalist Alex Maxwell, who’s struggling with the death of her industry but is not yet ready to give up the ghost. Fortunately, she lands a dream gig crafting a story about the glamorous lifestyles of the wives and girlfriends of the country’s biggest rappers. It turns out to be a small world. Among Alex’s subjects is Kipenzi Hill, a legendary singer-songwriter whose legend has outstripped that of her longtime partner Jake Giles. One of Kipenzi’s friends is pregnant Beth Saddlebrook, who fools herself into thinking that her husband Z isn’t dooming their relationship with crack and extracurricular sex. There’s also Ras Bennett, whose wife Josephine fantasizes about shooting an industry whore named Cleo, who’s writing a tell-all book about her exploits with rappers and ballplayers. For Alex, who’s about to be married to an up-and-coming artist named Birdie, it all starts to look far too familiar. “No, not much,” she thinks in pondering her own relationship. “Just to take care of your daughter. Front you cash when you need it. Pretend I don’t know you at industry events. Lie to your manager about where you are. Rub your back after a show. Cook for you. Clean up after you. Tell you that your music is wonderful…”
The men get the short end of the stick, but women looking for a steamy, gossipy beach read will find it right here.Pub Date: July 6, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4391-6025-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2010
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
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