A slight bagatelle in which even the weightiest topics are sloughed off like suntan lotion in a tropical rainstorm.
Three old friends and one newbie try to revive a vacation tradition, with mixed results.
The self-styled Girls of August are an intrepid band of doctors’ wives who have gotten together for annual summer sprees ever since Cornelia—the rich, blonde consort of party-animal physician Teddy—invited them to share her beach retreat. None of the other “girls”—Rachel, Barbara and narrator Maddy—actually liked Cornelia, but no matter; Teddy soon replaced her with the more copacetic Melinda. For the past three years, ever since Melinda’s tragic accidental death—Teddy was drunk at the wheel—the girls have stayed home, but then this summer, Baby, Teddy’s 20-something third wife, entices them to familiar Siddons territory, the South Carolina barrier islands. Baby’s opulent home is located on the deserted and fictional Tiger Island, virtually unpopulated except for a resident enclave of Gullah people. Gloriously incommunicado (the only cellphone having met its demise), the women drink, cook delicious meals and swim. But problems soon surface: Maddy suffers from intermittent nausea, Rachel almost drowns, and Barbara seems to be sliding into serious alcoholism. Baby is the source of much humor and rue among the 40-ish women: Not only is she blonde and independently wealthy like her predecessor, Cornelia, she enjoys flaunting her nubile figure by skinny-dipping. Perhaps to escape all the perimenopausal sarcasm, Baby disappears for long stretches. Is she having an affair with handsome Gullah fisherman Earl or merely plotting revenge? Someone removes the screen from Barbara’s window, letting in stinging bugs, and Maddy’s bed collapses one night. Has it all devolved into the middle-aged Southern version of summer camp farce? Nothing unpredictable or challenging can survive the many clichés—the wise and vaguely mystical Gullahs, the stereotypically airheaded trophy wife and the other characters who somehow lack the mettle of Steel Magnolias but who might qualify as copper or tin.
A slight bagatelle in which even the weightiest topics are sloughed off like suntan lotion in a tropical rainstorm.Pub Date: July 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-446-52795-8
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
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
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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