A thoughtfully written, rewarding read.
A spunky ballet teacher has to choose between her small-town sweetheart and a suave, Scottish newcomer.
After her New York City dance career fell flat, Casey Alexander came home to open a studio in Angel Falls, Alabama, a “dinky little deep-south town on the backside of nowhere.” To add insult to injury, she has to face Ben, the high school sweetheart who promised to follow her to New York but knocked up her best friend Melody instead. Three kids later, Melody is living the happily-ever-after life that should have been Casey’s. After a reconciliatory shopping trip ends in a freak car accident, Melody’s dying wish is that Casey take Ben back, and it looks like Casey could get that perfect-seeming life after all. However, Ian Buchanan, a newspaper mogul who has just bought the Angel Falls Informer and the building that houses Casey’s studio, has also put in a bid for Casey’s heart. Steamy nights with Ian, blissfully domestic moments with Ben, and bouts of survivor guilt result in a cocktail of emotions “as heady and confusing as Long Island Iced Tea.” Both prospects are not without their flaws. Ben’s version of caring for his kids—Jake, Maryann, and Amy—consists of foisting them on Casey at a moment’s notice. Ian is so surly that Casey initially nicknamed him the Newspaper Nazi, and he still bears the scars from a tragic first marriage. But when it comes to Ben and the kids, Casey will always be second best. De Jongh’s debut novel hits all its marks and blends romantic comedy, drama, and suspense. The characters are well-crafted—there’s no perfect Prince Charming—and Ben’s kids make for a compelling complication to the love triangle. Three-year-old Amy amplifies Casey’s guilt, and Jake’s rebellious preteen antics create opportunities for Ian to come to the rescue, though middle-child Maryann feels underdeveloped. Nevertheless, this is a lovely story about the intersections of love, friendship, duty, and self-care.
A thoughtfully written, rewarding read.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9979398-1-1
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Tranquil Dragonfly Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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