A well-crafted romance that will leave readers wondering until the last moment whether a happy ending is truly in the cards.
In her latest novel of romance and intrigue, Goulter (Giving a Damn About Scarlett, 2012) explores the realities of love and lust and whether love at first sight can last forever.
Joanna Mahler falls for eccentric Australian Will Richie hook, line and sinker. In San Francisco, she unexpectedly stumbles across the melodious sounds of Will’s voice during an afternoon stroll in the presidio. The divorced mother of two high school sons is immediately taken by Will’s voice and music. Though she describes Will’s appearance as “odd, almost elfin,” she’s enchanted. On impulse, and despite the warnings from family and friends, she agrees to fly to Australia and stay in the bush with Will for just over six weeks. As Joanna soon learns, true love isn’t always easy. Will is a divorced husband and father currently expecting another child with a needy former lover. He’s a poor dreamer banking on the income that will hopefully come from a new invention. The couple’s radically different backgrounds create predictable tensions for the unlikely love connection. Joanna is embroiled in small-town scandals and begins to doubt her choices; Will’s life is a disaster. Is he truly the man of her dreams, or was her journey an utter mistake? Goulter presents an intriguing mystery propelled by her characters’ questionable morals and intentions. Joanna’s motivations could be better fleshed out, as it stretches the limits of belief that a woman with a stable life would leave her children and home for a man she barely knows. Will is also an enigmatic character, though Goulter adeptly paints his physical traits and personality yet leaves his true motivations and interests in the shadows. Set in the Australian bush country, the landscape is at times beautiful and desolate, and Goulter allows the country itself to come alive as a character, furthering Joanna’s reservations and reinforcing her role as an outsider. Though her misgivings about her new situation aren’t surprising, one can’t help but simultaneously admire Joanna’s adventurous spirit while pitying her apparent naïveté.
A well-crafted romance that will leave readers wondering until the last moment whether a happy ending is truly in the cards.Pub Date: March 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-1479294992
Page Count: 210
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable...
An unlucky woman finally gets lucky in love on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii.
From getting her hand stuck in a claw machine at age 6 to losing her job, Olive Torres has never felt that luck was on her side. But her fortune changes when she scores a free vacation after her identical twin sister and new brother-in-law get food poisoning at their wedding buffet and are too sick to go on their honeymoon. The only catch is that she’ll have to share the honeymoon suite with her least favorite person—Ethan Thomas, the brother of the groom. To make matters worse, Olive’s new boss and Ethan’s ex-girlfriend show up in Hawaii, forcing them both to pretend to be newlyweds so they don’t blow their cover, as their all-inclusive vacation package is nontransferable and in her sister’s name. Plus, Ethan really wants to save face in front of his ex. The story is told almost exclusively from Olive’s point of view, filtering all communication through her cynical lens until Ethan can win her over (and finally have his say in the epilogue). To get to the happily-ever-after, Ethan doesn’t have to prove to Olive that he can be a better man, only that he was never the jerk she thought he was—for instance, when she thought he was judging her for eating cheese curds, maybe he was actually thinking of asking her out. Blending witty banter with healthy adult communication, the fake newlyweds have real chemistry as they talk it out over snorkeling trips, couples massages, and a few too many tropical drinks to get to the truth—that they’re crazy about each other.
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable as well as free.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2803-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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