Christian readers hungry for chick-lit may appreciate the effort, but it’s hard to imagine anyone else enjoying this...
Chick-lit gets inspirational.
Emily Hinton is a small-town girl who’s always dreamed of moving to Manhattan, so when she lands a job at a big publishing house, it looks like she’s going to make the dream a reality. She’ll soon find out, though, that big-city life isn’t always compatible with her faith, and the biggest test of all comes in the tall, dark and handsome form of Bennett Edward Wyatt III. Will she succumb to the enticements of New York, or will she make a stand for everything she believes in? Such is the conflict at the heart of Emily’s tale, and it signals one of the many ways it differs from standard chick-lit fare. There’ll be readers, heretofore underserved by popular women’s fiction, who will appreciate the absence of sex. There may also be readers who find Emily’s struggles to reconcile her faith with modern existence both realistic and resonant. But there may also be those who find Emily’s vision of Christianity narrow and judgmental, and some of them may wonder why Emily is willing to lose her job rather than work for a company that publishes a book attacking God and traditional family—while she has no problem spending her Christmas editing an ultraviolent thriller. And without any doubt, some will find Emily’s dogged naïveté utterly exasperating. Throughout her cosmopolitan adventures, after all, she remains much given to bemused sentiments of the “only in New York!” variety. And readers with any knowledge of the ways of the world—not to mention the ways of romantic fiction—will quickly recognize Bennett as a straw man. His professed faith never makes sense—old-money and evangelical Christianity don’t often go together—and he reveals himself as a cad way early.
Christian readers hungry for chick-lit may appreciate the effort, but it’s hard to imagine anyone else enjoying this generally irritating entry.Pub Date: June 21, 2005
ISBN: 0-385-51463-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
