An adorably sweet Tinseltown romance, perfect for a day at the LA beach.
Lighthearted fiction about a woman who gets paid to help regular people meet famous people in seemingly chance encounters.
Debut novelist Goode introduces her sassy heroine, Olivia Fowler, as she orchestrates an “accidental” meeting between a popular celebrity and one of his awestruck fans. Olivia owns her own business in which she creates these ostensibly random run-ins. Olivia focuses on what will motivate the celebrity, not the client, to strike up a conversation; for example, she advises a client to join a local soccer team with which the celebrity sometimes plays. She’s good at her job and she knows it. Indeed, everything is running smoothly until she meets Alexander Young, a much-loved actor, truly by chance, and he takes a romantic interest in her. Perhaps because of all the training she’s given clients over the years, Olivia soon finds herself charming the pants off one of Hollywood’s biggest heartthrobs. It’s not long before she finds that, against her better judgment, she and Alexander have become a couple. What will happen if her clients see a photo of them in a tabloid, or, worse, if Alexander finds out what she does for a living? As Goode builds the suspense in this fast-paced story, readers will find themselves rooting for Olivia despite her profession’s moral ambiguity. The author shows particular strength at creating likable, hip characters who forge realistic, meaningful bonds with one another. Despite the blithe nature of the story, the players are multidimensional and nuanced, which results in a more complex scenario than initially meets the eye. Readers may sometimes be required to suspend disbelief as Olivia so easily finds ways to meet one A-list celebrity after another, but the payoff in seeing how she resolves her own complicated situation is worth it.
An adorably sweet Tinseltown romance, perfect for a day at the LA beach.Pub Date: June 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9961769-1-0
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Beach Blanket Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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