Friendly, funny little romance, despite its category contrivances.
The perils of a small-town hairdresser and single mom, as seen in a first from Flannigan.
Jolene Hadley Corbett knows something is going to happen when her own hair won’t cooperate. It’s a frowzy mess today—and that’s a bad sign. All the Hadleys believe in signs, unlike the materialistic O’Malleys, who always seemed to get the jump on everyone else in Verbena, North Carolina, when it came to making money. The two families have been enmeshed in a petty feud for decades, even though their patriarch, Howdy O’Malley, redeemed himself somewhat by being so nice to Jolie’s young son Dylan, letting the boy do odd jobs at South Winds, the motel he owns across the street from her beauty parlor. But the other members of the grasping clan are so mean they didn’t even show up for the old man’s funeral . . . except for Ryman O’Malley, Jolie’s teenage crush. Well, well, well—he’s gotten a lot taller and filled out nicely, become a private pilot and generally made a success of his life (except for his sullen, 17-year-old daughter Sugar Anne). And what, Jolie inquires, are his plans for the South Winds motel, a local institution renowned for its retro charm and All-Day Breakfast Buffet? Ryman replies that he’s going to tear it down. But it does make money, she points out. Don’t the O’Malleys love and worship the almighty dollar above all else? Well, not Ryman. He’s actually tearing the quaint old structure down to prevent his mercenary relations from moving in—or something like that. In the meantime, he’d love to take Jolie for the ride of her life in an ancient convertible called the Starliner that they resurrect from her granny’s auto wrecking yard. Then Sugar Anne decides to chain herself to the fence in front of the South Winds to keep the bulldozers at bay—and all hell breaks loose.
Friendly, funny little romance, despite its category contrivances.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-380-81936-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2003
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
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
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