An effortlessly romantic read, if a bit implausible.
In this love story, a man and a woman find solace from heartache in each other.
Garrett Oliver lands his dream job, working at a resort in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee as a gardener, apprenticing under Finn Janssen, a master of his craft. Garrett’s been separated for months from his college girlfriend, Lindsay, who remains in school in Washington State, a distance that has taken its toll on their relationship. She eventually arrives in Tennessee for a short visit. But in response to his marriage proposal, she breaks up with him and quickly returns to Washington. Willow Armstrong, the recently hired general manager of the resort, overhears Lindsay on the phone speaking to what sounds like her new lover, evidence that she had already begun a relationship before leaving Garrett. Garrett is crestfallen but also immediately attracted to Willow, who experiences the same intense feelings. Meanwhile, Willow has her own reasons for romantic caution—she proposed to her own boyfriend, only to be rejected in favor of another woman. And she moved back to Tennessee to care for her increasingly ill father, an executive for a company that owns a hotel chain. Soon her life becomes even more complicated. After her father dies, she suddenly discovers that he was a multimillionaire. But she might not be his sole heir—a man steps forward who believes Willow’s father was also his own, with his birth the result of an affair. This is the second installment in Thome’s (Walland, 2016) Hesse Creek series, and it’s just as easy and pleasurable to read as its predecessor. While this sweet book revolves around the same resort and cast of characters for the most part, its enjoyment doesn’t presuppose knowledge of the series opener. The author repeats the fictional formula of her first novel as well—a relationship forged out of a powerful magnetism and shared grief—and yet again manages a mostly lighthearted mélange of tender love story and thoughtfully depicted trauma. But the plot in this volume is now too cluttered and less likely—it’s hard to imagine a woman growing up without a clue that her father was lavishly wealthy.
An effortlessly romantic read, if a bit implausible.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9978504-2-0
Page Count: 239
Publisher: Hesse Creek Media
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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