YA adventure for the older set.
In a debut intended to launch a series, attractive but lovelorn Laurel Kinsgsford finds romance, adventure, a kindly grandfather and a shocking letter on the shores of Lake Ontario.
Furious to learn that a protégé has been promoted over her head, the brainy young naval engineer quits her job only to find when she gets home that her live-in boyfriend has cleaned out the closets and their checking accounts. Licking her wounds and alone in the world, Laurel retreats to the Twice Told Hotel on the southeastern shore of Lake Ontario, which she had visited several times as a child. There, she bonds with Jake Eastland, the hotel’s elderly owner, whose career arc has taken him from Prohibition-era smuggler to 21st-century multibillionaire. The reader quickly learns, though Laurel does not, that Jake is her grandfather. Long estranged from his late wife, he’s been secretly pulling strings in Laurel’s life (as revealed in interspersed flashbacks that take up half the text). Unaware of his wealth and their connection, Laurel just likes the old gaffer for his crusty self. Jake might just be ready to reveal the family tie, but first he needs to help his granddaughter recover her self-confidence. He involves Laurel, a proficient diver, in efforts to locate some jazz-age hooch he dumped when the Coast Guard got too close, and he tantalizes her with tales of a treasure-laden Revolutionary War ship that sank nearby. To assist them in their quest, Jake hires Michael Marvin McKean, a handsome former Coast Guard captain with a broken heart who is, coincidentally, a descendant of the officer who nearly caught bootlegger Eastland with the goods all those years ago. But before romance can blossom, Laurel and Mike must first weather rough seas and danger from a tough clan Jake has tangled with.
YA adventure for the older set.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-60164-004-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Künati
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2006
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
BOOK REVIEW
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