A slow-paced story with a positive message of the joyful possibilities of life after divorce.
Unhappy divorcée with a nose for fragrances finds romance—and herself—in small-town Colorado.
Nicole (Nikki) Carrington might not have wanted the big empty house she once shared with her ex-husband and daughter to blow up, but it did, because Nikki had been too terrified of going down into the basement alone to check on the furnace. This failure of nerve sets the tone for Samuel’s latest effort (The Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue, 2004). Left homeless, and virtually childless after granting her former husband Daniel, a successful black businessman, primary custody of their 16-year-old biracial daughter Giselle, Nikki is forced to move into an apartment complex occupied predominantly by singles. It is there she meets and befriends Roxanne, aka Madame Mirabou, a part-time tarot card reader and walking example of how not to handle a divorce. Nikki gets a job waitressing at an upscale health-food restaurant where she is romantically pursued by one of the regulars, Niraj, a sweetly sensual British/Indian transplant with just enough emotional baggage to make him somewhat believable. She also rediscovers her long-dormant talent for creating signature perfumes. Her scent journal, in which she ruminates on her own olfactory memories, frames each chapter; the evocative descriptions of various scent combinations are the most compelling and interesting parts of the story. After passing an abandoned storefront, Nikki is inspired to open her own perfume shop. As she focuses on acquiring and renovating the charmingly offbeat space, she realizes that can actually enjoy life.
A slow-paced story with a positive message of the joyful possibilities of life after divorce.Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46914-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Stand did less well than The Shining, and The Dead Zone will do less well than either—as the King of high horror (Carrie) continues to move away from the grand-gothic strain that once distinguished him from the other purveyors of psychic melodrama. Here he's taken on a political-suspense plot formula that others have done far better, giving it just the merest trappings of deviltry. Johnnie Smith of Cleaves Mills, Maine, is a super-psychic; after a four-year coma, he has woken up to find that he can see the future—all of it except for certain areas he calls the "dead zone." So Johnnie can do great things, like saving a friend from death-by-lightning or reuniting his doctor with long-lost relatives. But Johnnie also can see a horrible presidential candidate on the horizon. He's Mayor Gregory Aromas Stillson of Ridgeway, N.H., and only Johnnie knows that this apparently klutzy candidate is really the devil incarnate—that if Stillson is elected he'll become the new Hitler and plunge the world into atomic horror! What can Johnnie do? All he can do is try to assassinate this Satanic candidate—in a climactic shootout that is recycled and lackluster and not helped by King's clumsy social commentary (". . . it was as American as The Wonderful Worm of Disney"). Johnnie is a faceless hero, and never has King's banal, pulpy writing been so noticeable in its once-through-the-typewriter blather and carelessness. Yes, the King byline will ensure a sizeable turnout, but the word will soon get around that the author of Carrie has this time churned out a ho-hum dud.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1979
ISBN: 0451155750
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1979
Clunky prose and long-winded dissertations on comparative religion can’t impede the breathless momentum of the Demon-Drop...
A convicted murderer who may be a latter-day Messiah wants to donate his heart to the sister of one of his victims, in Picoult’s frantic 15th (Nineteen Minutes, 2007, etc.).
Picoult specializes in hot-button issues. This latest blockbuster-to-be stars New Hampshire’s first death-row inmate in decades, Shay Bourne, a 33-year-old carpenter and drifter convicted of murdering the police officer husband of his employer, June, and her seven-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. Eleven years later Shay is still awaiting execution by lethal injection. Suddenly, miracles start to happen around Shay—cell-block tap water turns to wine, an AIDS-stricken fellow inmate is cured, a pet bird and then a guard are resurrected from the dead. Shay’s spiritual adviser, Father Michael, is beginning to believe that Shay is a reincarnation of Christ, particularly when the uneducated man starts quoting key phrases from the Gnostic gospels. Michael hasn’t told Shay that he served on the jury that condemned him to death. June’s daughter Claire, in dire need of a heart transplant, is slowly dying. When Shay, obeying the Gnostic prescription to “bring forth what is within you,” offers, through his attorney, ACLU activist Maggie, to donate his heart, June is at first repelled. Practical obstacles also arise: A viable heart cannot be harvested from a lethally injected donor. So Maggie sues in Federal Court to require the state to hang Shay instead, on the grounds that his intended gift is integral to his religious beliefs. Shay’s execution looms, and then Father Michael learns more troubling news: Shay, who, like Jesus, didn’t defend himself at trial, may be innocent.
Clunky prose and long-winded dissertations on comparative religion can’t impede the breathless momentum of the Demon-Drop plot.Pub Date: March 4, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7434-9674-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2008
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
