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JUST PRU

Name: JUST PRU
Author: Anne Pfeffer

by Anne Pfeffer ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 2, 2015

Psychological seriousness adds depth to this romantic coming-of-age tale.

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In this novel, an anxiety-ridden young woman finds new friends and inner resources after an apartment fire forces her to accept a neighbor’s hospitality.

Prudence Anderson—“just Pru”—25, unemployed, has just moved to Los Angeles. She’s a tall, big-boned size 16, as she tells us on Page 1. (Although the average American woman wears a 14, readers are to understand that Pru naturally considers herself too large.) As this novel opens, Pru is hitting every lonely-girl cliché: scraping ice cream off her flannel nightgown with a potato chip while watching TV with her cat. That’s when the fire starts. She and the cat escape, but the apartment is uninhabitable. Luckily, her young, cool neighbor Ellen, a playwright and director, offers to put them up. Home-schooled, shy and overprotected, Pru has a raft of anxieties; the death of her beloved therapist has made even driving her car a challenge. But in helping Ellen at the theater, Pru finds she has something to contribute—and in Adam, a handsome germophobe neighbor, she finds someone who gets her. Pru fights to resist her parents’ belittling bid to crush her independence. The Cinderella story is familiar enough, and some matters are made almost ridiculously easy for Pru; a vacationing neighbor with a huge closet of glam clothes wears Pru’s size and doesn’t mind sharing. But Pfeffer (The Wedding Cake Girl, 2012, etc.) makes wry use of the tropes by having Pru call them out from her favorite TV shows. For example, she’s wary of Blake, a charismatic actor and bad-boy romantic choice, because he reminds her of “Count Randall Blackstone, a scalawag of noble birth” from a TV series. Pfeffer also adds emotional layers; Blake is more complicated than he seems. Pru’s anxieties are genuinely crippling, and though Pru begins with a taste for the “heart-warming and inspirational,” by the end she appreciates Ellen’s dark, grim play.

Psychological seriousness adds depth to this romantic coming-of-age tale.

Pub Date: March 2, 2015

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher

Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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WHAT WE DO FOR LOVE
by Anne Pfeffer

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by Anne Pfeffer

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

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THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

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THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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ORIGIN

by Dan Brown ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 3, 2017

The plot is absurd, of course, but the book is a definitive pleasure. Prepare to be absorbed—and in more ways than one.

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Another Brown (Inferno, 2013, etc.) blockbuster, blending arcana, religion, and skulduggery—sound familiar?—with the latest headlines.

You just have to know that when the first character you meet in a Brown novel is a debonair tech mogul and the second a bony-fingered old bishop, you’ll end up with a clash of ideologies and worldviews. So it is. Edmond Kirsch, once a student of longtime Brown hero Robert Langdon, the Harvard symbologist–turned–action hero, has assembled a massive crowd, virtual and real, in Bilbao to announce he’s discovered something that’s destined to kill off religion and replace it with science. It would be ungallant to reveal just what the discovery is, but suffice it to say that the religious leaders of the world are in a tizzy about it, whereupon one shadowy Knights of Malta type takes it upon himself to put a bloody end to Kirsch’s nascent heresy. Ah, but what if Kirsch had concocted an AI agent so powerful that his own death was just an inconvenience? What if it was time for not just schism, but singularity? Digging into the mystery, Langdon finds a couple of new pals, one of them that computer avatar, and a whole pack of new enemies, who, not content just to keep Kirsch’s discovery under wraps, also frown on the thought that a great many people in the modern world, including some extremely prominent Spaniards, find fascism and Falangism passé and think the reigning liberal pope is a pretty good guy. Yes, Franco is still dead, as are Christopher Hitchens, Julian Jaynes, Jacques Derrida, William Blake, and other cultural figures Brown enlists along the way—and that’s just the beginning of the body count. The old ham-fisted Brown is here in full glory (“In that instant, Langdon realized that perhaps there was a macabre silver lining to Edmond’s horrific murder”; “The vivacious, strong-minded beauty had turned Julián’s world upside down”)—but, for all his defects as a stylist, it can’t be denied that he knows how to spin a yarn, and most satisfyingly.

The plot is absurd, of course, but the book is a definitive pleasure. Prepare to be absorbed—and in more ways than one.