A worthwhile if imperfect trip to Bluewater Bay, where agonizing grief is transformed by unconditional love.
A closeted movie star can’t grieve the loss of his old love until a new love shows him the way.
Lane’s (Lollipop, 2016, etc.) contribution to the multiauthor LGBTQ Bluewater Bay romance series offers her trademark angst and emotional sensuality. After a year of using alcohol to numb his sorrow over the tragic death of his longtime partner, closeted movie star Connor Montgomery posts a drunken video that nearly ends his career. At the urging of his agent, Connor leaves his Malibu beach house full of painful memories to take a role in a paranormal TV series filming outside Seattle. Connor is instantly attracted to his local assistant, Noah Dakers, whose mixed African-American and Native American heritage gives him the dark good looks Connor can’t resist. Lane averts a cliché by writing Noah as a mature and centered 20-something, not a star-struck local, but his instalove for Connor coupled with his flawless character detract from the romance. The sex scenes are explicit (including several kinks) and important, since the bedroom is the only place where Connor can mute the voice of his dead lover, opening himself to the present moment. Connor’s movement out of desolation is slowed by his reluctance to examine his lost relationship and by his dawning realization of the costs of being closeted. While affecting, it feels a little too slow at times. Noah’s lament near the end of the novel could have opened it: “You have like…an iceberg of damage in you, and you keep trying to think it’s all fine, but I keep wrecking myself on bigger and bigger pieces.” Without a clearer understanding of his motives, readers may wonder why Noah is willing to stay in the water.
A worthwhile if imperfect trip to Bluewater Bay, where agonizing grief is transformed by unconditional love.Pub Date: April 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62649-385-8
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Riptide
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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