A well-written novel sure to satisfy fans of small-town romances with a touch of danger.
In the first installment of Avon’s series, a young man struggles to establish a career and navigate a fraught new romantic relationship while reeling from the loss of his mother.
When readers first meet 30-year-old Mario, the protagonist is contemplatively smoking a cigarette as he waves to the mortician ferrying away his mother’s body. With his father long since out of the picture—even if Mario knows just where to find him—and his mother recently dead, Mario is now effectively an orphan. In his younger, better days, when he was living in the nice part of town, Mario was one of the cool kids at school, a football quarterback from a well-to-do family who harbored dreams of one day becoming a chef. Now, left by his parents’ divorce and mother’s death in dire straits and living quite literally on the wrong side of the tracks, those dreams seem like a thing of the past, no matter how much Mario knows his mother would want him to chase after his ambitions. Whether for his own satisfaction or to honor his dead mother, Mario humbles himself before his father by asking for a job at his restaurant, but he is insulted by the dishwasher position he’s offered. Mario soon lucks into a different opportunity: He meets Dean (friends call him “Dito”), owner of Dean’s Pizzeria, where he soon begins to work as a cook. Things are looking up, and soon Mario even meets a girl—Teresa, or, as friends call her, “Tess.” As if her beauty weren’t enough to attract Mario, Tess comes from the other, ‘better’ side of town and reminds him of his old life, when times were easier. But as in so many romances that seem, at first, too good to be true, there is trouble; Tess is harboring dark secrets that threaten to derail the hard-fought progress Mario has achieved for himself.
Avon’s novel is teeming with characters readers will feel they have seen before: an ambitious young man with a worthless, selfish father; a loving, long-suffering mother; a pretty girl with a checkered past. While at first readers may fear clichés abound, the author deftly leans on her command of setting to inform the characters, as seen here in a description of the apartment Mario’s mother left behind: “The story [she had been reading] without an audience had been eternally suspended, like a movie reel that snaps in the middle of the film’s denouement. On the bedroom dresser, a full bottle of baby powder was tipped on its side, spilling its guts. Clothes hung on their hangers; emaciated shells craving a human.” Avon’s evocative language carries the day here, and while there are passages that skirt overwriting (the phrase “feculent with impurity” appears in the novel’s opening sentence, for example), the vivid prose, in combination with the natural tension of a burgeoning love story pressurized by the secrets young lovers hide from one another, makes this novel stand out in a crowded field of suspenseful romance tales.
A well-written novel sure to satisfy fans of small-town romances with a touch of danger.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2021
ISBN: 9798533357043
Page Count: 174
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fresh and upbeat, though not without flaws.
An earnest grad student and a faculty member with a bit of a jerkish reputation concoct a fake dating scheme in this nerdy, STEM-filled contemporary romance.
Olive Smith and professor Adam Carlsen first met in the bathroom of Adam's lab. Olive wore expired contact lenses, reducing her eyes to temporary tears, while Adam just needed to dispose of a solution. It's a memory that only one of them has held onto. Now, nearly three years later, Olive is fully committed to her research in pancreatic cancer at Stanford University's biology department. As a faculty member, Adam's reputation precedes him, since he's made many students cry or drop their programs entirely with his bluntness. When Olive needs her best friend, Anh, to think she's dating someone so Anh will feel more comfortable getting involved with Olive's barely-an-ex, Jeremy, she impulsively kisses Adam, who happens to be standing there when Anh walks by. But rumors start to spread, and the one-time kiss morphs into a fake relationship, especially as Adam sees there's a benefit for him. The university is withholding funds for Adam's research out of fear that he'll leave for a better position elsewhere. If he puts down more roots by getting involved with someone, his research funds could be released at the next budgeting meeting in about a month's time. After setting a few ground rules, Adam and Olive agree that come the end of September, they'll part ways, having gotten what they need from their arrangement. Hazelwood has a keen understanding of romance tropes and puts them to good use—in addition to fake dating, Olive and Adam are an opposites-attract pairing with their sunny and grumpy personalities—but there are a couple of weaknesses in this debut novel. Hazelwood manages to sidestep a lot of the complicated power dynamics of a student-faculty romance by putting Olive and Adam in different departments, but the impetus for their fake relationship has much higher stakes for Adam. Olive does reap the benefits of dating a faculty member, but in the end, she's still the one seemingly punished or taunted by her colleagues; readers may have been hoping for a more subversive twist. For a first novel, there's plenty of shine here, with clear signs that Hazelwood feels completely comfortable with happily-ever-afters.
Fresh and upbeat, though not without flaws.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-33682-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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