A social-climbing sociopath from Michigan manipulates rich Manhattan relatives—and everyone else—to get what she wants in Dunlop’s second novel (Losing the Light, 2015, etc.).
Laila is a 23-year-old dental hygienist in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, engaged to marry the dentist she works for. Her father died years earlier, and she doesn't know much about his side of the family. When her mother dies, Laila's paternal cousins show up at the funeral, and she's thrilled to discover that they're wealthy New Yorkers—twins Nora and Leo and their older sister, Liberty. Two years later, divorced from her husband, she moves to New York. She's found a stash of letters to her mother from her paternal grandfather that implies an affair between them, which might explain Laila’s parents’ banishment to the hinterlands before her birth. Now Laila wants to reconnect with her family, and family money. Slightly dim Nora invites her to stay in her Tribeca penthouse. Laila is happy to be Nora’s “Pygmalion-like project,” complete with a new wardrobe from Bergdorf Goodman. Former model Liberty, more serious and intellectual and less social than her siblings, finds Laila an internship at the prominent literary agency where she works. Knowing she’s beautiful, Laila makes the most of it. She dumps the famous novelist who falls madly in love with her and heads to Mustique with a ruthless British billionaire who sends her packing when she gets drunk with some hippie strangers. Meanwhile she has a series of tawdry sexual encounters with Cameron, Liberty's best friend's brother, who is also carrying on a very proper courtship with Liberty, encounters that don’t end after Laila moves in with real estate mogul’s son Blake Katz (a too-obvious take on Jared Kushner). For a self-described “skilled chameleon,” Laila makes a lot of self-destructive decisions.
Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5598-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A middle-aged woman returns to her childhood home to care for her ailing father, confronting many painful secrets from her past.
When Mallory Aldiss gets a call from a long-ago boyfriend telling her that her elderly father has been gallivanting around town with a gun in his hand, Mallory decides it’s time to return to the small Rhode Island town that she’s been avoiding for more than a decade. Mallory’s precocious 13-year-old daughter, Joy, is thrilled that she'll get to meet her grandfather at long last, and an aunt, too, and she'll finally see the place where her mother grew up. When they arrive in Bay Bluff, it’s barely a few hours before Mallory bumps into her old flame, Jack, the only man she’s ever really loved. Gone is the rebellious young person she remembers, and in his place stands a compassionate, accomplished adult. As they try to reconnect, Mallory realizes that the same obstacle that pushed them apart decades earlier is still standing in their way: Jack blames Mallory’s father for his mother’s death. No one knows exactly how Jack’s mother died, but Jack thinks a love affair between her and Mallory’s father had something to do with it. As Jack and Mallory chase down answers, Mallory also tries to repair her rocky relationships with her two sisters and determine why her father has always been so hard on her. Told entirely from Mallory’s perspective, the novel has a haunting, nostalgic quality. Despite the complex and overlapping layers to the history of Bay Bluff and its inhabitants, the book at times trudges too slowly through Mallory’s meanderings down Memory Lane. Even so, Delinsky sometimes manages to pick up the pace, and in those moments the beauty and nuance of this complicated family tale shine through. Readers who don’t mind skimming past details that do little to advance the plot may find that the juicier nuggets and realistically rendered human connections are worth the effort.
A touching family drama that effectively explores the negative impact of stress on fragile relationships.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-11951-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
Categories: FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION
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A love letter to the power of books and friendship.
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Women become horseback librarians in 1930s Kentucky and face challenges from the landscape, the weather, and the men around them.
Alice thought marrying attractive American Bennett Van Cleve would be her ticket out of her stifling life in England. But when she and Bennett settle in Baileyville, Kentucky, she realizes that her life consists of nothing more than staying in their giant house all day and getting yelled at by his unpleasant father, who owns a coal mine. She’s just about to resign herself to a life of boredom when an opportunity presents itself in the form of a traveling horseback library—an initiative from Eleanor Roosevelt meant to counteract the devastating effects of the Depression by focusing on literacy and learning. Much to the dismay of her husband and father-in-law, Alice signs up and soon learns the ropes from the library’s leader, Margery. Margery doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her, rejects marriage, and would rather be on horseback than in a kitchen. And even though all this makes Margery a town pariah, Alice quickly grows to like her. Along with several other women (including one black woman, Sophia, whose employment causes controversy in a town that doesn’t believe black and white people should be allowed to use the same library), Margery and Alice supply magazines, Bible stories, and copies of books like Little Women to the largely poor residents who live in remote areas. Alice spends long days in terrible weather on horseback, but she finally feels happy in her new life in Kentucky, even as her marriage to Bennett is failing. But her powerful father-in-law doesn’t care for Alice’s job or Margery’s lifestyle, and he’ll stop at nothing to shut their library down. Basing her novel on the true story of the Pack Horse Library Project established by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, Moyes (Still Me, 2018, etc.) brings an often forgotten slice of history to life. She writes about Kentucky with lush descriptions of the landscape and tender respect for the townspeople, most of whom are poor, uneducated, and grateful for the chance to learn. Although Alice and Margery both have their own romances, the true power of the story is in the bonds between the women of the library. They may have different backgrounds, but their commitment to helping the people of Baileyville brings them together.
A love letter to the power of books and friendship.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-56248-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
Categories: GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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