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
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
