Run-of-the-mill divorce drama from a veteran author (Shades of Grace, 1996, etc.), this featuring the owner of a wicker-furniture chain who's betrayed by her husband but adored by someone much cuter. With a business to run, two kids to see to, and a dying mother, Boston businesswoman Claire Raphael has too much on her mind to notice that her husband, Dennis, a failed venture capitalist, has been exhibiting symptoms of restlessness and envy. Dennis does capture her attention, though, when Claire returns from a business trip to find the kids gone and a summons server waiting on her doorstep. It appears that Claire is being sued for divorce and has been removed from her house and separated from her children by court order on the grounds that by working too hard and having an affair with her CEO she's an unfit mother. Readers might feel sorry for the unjustly accused Claire if she didn't feel so monumentally sorry for herself. Declaring that ``wanting it all'' doesn't make her an evil person, she flees weeping into the arms of said CEO—incidentally her husband's former college roommate, and a handsome hunk with a house on the shore besides—and, while accepting a warm, tingly but emphatically platonic hug from him (photographed through the window, natch, by her jealous husband), decides that she won't take Dennis's false accusations lying down. Enlisting the aid of a lawyer, Claire starts digging up the dirt on Dennis, while simultaneously buying, refurbishing, and furnishing a charming old lighthouse to live in (this takes only one day, so organized is she), dealing with her daughter's allergies and her son's emotional withdrawal when Dennis proves incompetentas a psychological helper, and, just for fun, indulging after all in that affair with her CEO before she brings her former husband to his knees. Therapeutic, perhaps, for readers in the throes of their own divorces, but too formulaic for others.
Pub Date: March 26, 1997
ISBN: 0-06-017506-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
Less chick-lit beach read than old-fashioned Joan Crawford tearjerker.
In Hilderbrand’s fifth Nantucket novel (The Blue Bistro, 2005, etc.), a vacationing college student arranges to meet with her mysterious godmother, a former restaurateur of renown, to learn more about her dead mother.
Despite ambivalence, 19-year-old Columbia sophomore Renata has become engaged to Cade. While visiting his wealthy family at their Nantucket summer home, she calls her godmother Marguerite and arranges to have dinner. Renata wants to know more about her mother Candace, who died on the island 14 years earlier. Renata does not realize that Marguerite was so overcome by guilt and despair after Candace’s death that she had a psychotic break, sold her very successful restaurant and has been living for years as an island recluse. The novel follows Renata and Marguerite’s lives hour by hour throughout the day leading up to the dinner Marguerite prepares for them. While shopping for the meal, Marguerite visits key people from her past who force her to relive what happened years earlier: how she met her long-time, part-time lover Porter, and through him his half-sister Candace, who became her dearest friend; how Candace fell in love and married Dan, owner of the Beach Club; how they had Renata and moved away; how in a moment of despair after Porter’s final rejection, Marguerite declared her love for Candace; how shortly thereafter Candace was hit by a drunk driver while jogging. Meanwhile, Renata is struggling against Cade’s insufferable mother and against her own attraction to the handsome houseboy. She calls her father to announce her engagement, subconsciously knowing Dan will come to the rescue. He does, but not before Renata has come face to face with near tragedy and run away to Marguerite, leaving Cade’s engagement ring behind. Dan, Marguerite and Renata finally reunite, truths are told and old wounds healed.
Less chick-lit beach read than old-fashioned Joan Crawford tearjerker.Pub Date: June 30, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-32230-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006
With characters you care for, a smooth, engaging plot and an interesting reflection on values and success, romance/women’s...
Sonnet Romano has spent her adult years working hard to make a name for herself out in the real world, far away from her idyllic hometown, Willow Lake. But when life takes some unexpected turns, she may just realize that everything she’s been looking for is right back where she started.
Sonnet has checked off most of the big boxes on her "must-do-before-age-thirty" list, and she’s over-the-moon about her life in Manhattan, her job with UNESCO and the opportunities on the horizon from winning a prestigious international program fellowship. But everything comes to a screeching halt when she learns her newly married mother—who had Sonnet as a teenager and raised her as a single mom—is pregnant and sick. Forsaking the fellowship, Sonnet moves back to Willow Lake to be with her mother, risking disapproval from her father, who’s running for the U.S. Senate, and her fledgling boyfriend, who’s working on her father’s campaign. She accepts a job on a reality show being shot in the town, featuring an infamous female rapper and bunch of inner-city kids, and learns that her estranged best friend has been hired as the lead cameraman. Sonnet and Zach have been friends forever, but he is part of her past, and they are on different paths in life. Despite a sizzling newfound attraction between them, she wants her mom to get well, the baby to be born and the show to be wrapped, so she can get back to the city and her own fast track to the successful, prestigious future she’s always worked toward. But slowing down has a funny way of forcing Sonnet to take stock, and maybe her idea of a perfect life will alter with a little help from the old and new important people in her life and the picture-perfect town she grew up in.
With characters you care for, a smooth, engaging plot and an interesting reflection on values and success, romance/women’s fiction favorite Wiggs sends up another charming winner in the Lakeshore Chronicles series.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7783-1384-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2012
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