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
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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