Ridiculous tale with no fresh detours.
Silly college graduate gets fired from her desk job and finds a new gig as a “wingwoman”: a hottie who helps rich, eligible bachelors find dates in Chicago bars and clubs.
When Victoria Hart again fails to show up at her job as a sales assistant because she overslept, her boss fires her. OMG! What's a girl to do? Go shopping, of course. Victoria is obsessed with all things designer, and she spends gobs of cash submitting to her every whim. She would happily plow through her days vacantly self-obsessing over her rail-thin body, but she has to pay for that $285 face cream somehow. So she signs on as a wingwoman and is soon the matchmaking belle of Chicago. The sassy catch here is that Vic won't tell her friends what she does even though one suggested the job to her in the first place (much better drama to try to hide it). This leads to all sorts of crazy antics and misunderstandings, such as when her friends think she might be working as a prostitute. Oh, the things young single women must put up with in order to put slinky clothes on their label-starved backs! To make matters even more complicated, Victoria's spoiled boar of a best friend has asked her to be her personal assistant for her wedding. OMG! Victoria is too young to have friends who get married! She tailspins into another shopping splurge or two and eventually her career, love life and wedding duties climax at the grand event.
Ridiculous tale with no fresh detours.Pub Date: June 27, 2006
ISBN: 0-307-23864-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Three Rivers/Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
Pevear's informative introduction and numerous helpful explanatory notes help make this the essential Anna Karenina.
The husband-and-wife team who have given us refreshing English versions of Dostoevsky, Gogol, and Chekhov now present their lucid translation of Tolstoy's panoramic tale of adultery and society: a masterwork that may well be the greatest realistic novel ever written. It's a beautifully structured fiction, which contrasts the aristocratic world of two prominent families with the ideal utopian one dreamed by earnest Konstantin Levin (a virtual self-portrait). The characters of the enchanting Anna (a descendant of Flaubert's Emma Bovary and Fontane's Effi Briest, and forerunner of countless later literary heroines), the lover (Vronsky) who proves worthy of her indiscretion, her bloodless husband Karenin and ingenuous epicurean brother Stiva, among many others, are quite literally unforgettable. Perhaps the greatest virtue of this splendid translation is the skill with which it distinguishes the accents of Anna's romantic egoism from the spare narrative clarity with which a vast spectrum of Russian life is vividly portrayed.
Pevear's informative introduction and numerous helpful explanatory notes help make this the essential Anna Karenina.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-89478-8
Page Count: 864
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001
PERSPECTIVES
Entertaining and unpredictable; Reid makes a compelling argument for happiness in every life.
Reid’s latest (After I Do, 2014, etc.) explores two parallel universes in which a young woman hopes to find her soul mate and change her life for the better.
After ending an affair with a married man, Hannah Martin is reunited with her high school sweetheart, Ethan, at a bar in Los Angeles. Should she go home with her friends and catch up with him later, or should they stay out and have another drink? It doesn’t seem like either decision would have earth-shattering consequences, but Reid has a knack for finding skeletons in unexpected closets. Two vastly different scenarios play out in alternating chapters: in one, Hannah and Ethan reconnect as if no time has passed; in the other, Hannah lands in the hospital alone after a freak accident that marks the first of many surprising plot twists. Hannah’s best friend, Gabby, believes in soul mates, and though Hannah has trouble making decisions—even when picking a snack from a vending machine—she and Gabby discover how their belief systems can alter their world as much as their choices. “Believing in fate is like living on cruise control,” Hannah says. What follows is a thoughtful analysis of free will versus fate in which Hannah finds that disasters can bring unexpected blessings, blessings can bring unexpected disasters, and that most people are willing to bring Hannah her favorite cinnamon rolls. “Because even when it looks like she’s made a terrible mistake,” Hannah’s mother observes, “things will always work out for Hannah.” The larger question becomes whether Hannah’s choices will ultimately affect her happiness—and it’s one that’s answered on a hopeful note as Hannah tries to do the right thing in every situation she faces.
Entertaining and unpredictable; Reid makes a compelling argument for happiness in every life.Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-7688-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
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