A Christian beach read that loses its anchor early on but still delivers a welcome, gentle sea breeze of a story.
A hotheaded young professional finds God—and maybe even romantic love—in Chehak’s breezy debut novel.
Trina Santo has many reasons to take a break from her life in San Francisco, including a stubborn boss, a demanding job as a museum professional, and a cheating boyfriend. In the small California beach town of Catamara, she takes a summer job managing her family’s gift shop, The Hidden Treasure, and it promises to be a soothing balm for her agitated soul. She applies her efficiency and eye for art to her aunt and uncle’s shop, tightening daily operations and supporting local artists by providing them an informal forum. After some necessary store renovations, she reunites with her former high school sweetheart, Daniel Taylor. She also gets her Nancy Drew on when she decides to investigate an old mystery surrounding paintings by beloved local artist Pierre Dupre. One of them features an angel on a white horse running on the beach, depicting heaven’s goodness and light, and is on view at the local church. But where’s the other painting of a fallen angel riding a black horse? Santo’s sleuthing skills are on full display as she tackles the mystery with help from Daniel and her own prayers. Chehak’s portrayal of a young woman finding God as an anchor in her life feels earned, even if the character’s constant pauses for prayer seem a tad unrealistic. The initial setup ultimately proves to be a damp squib as the plot pulls a bait-and-switch, moving on to drawn-out questions regarding art forgeries. Nevertheless, the descriptions of the sun-kissed, surf-drenched seaside landscape are things of beauty and evocatively depict small-town joys and summer fun. Readers will almost feel the sand in between their toes as they read this lighthearted adventure.
A Christian beach read that loses its anchor early on but still delivers a welcome, gentle sea breeze of a story.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5127-1531-6
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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