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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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