by Bev Pettersen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 27, 2012
A somewhat formulaic story, enlivened by amiable characters and a robust setting.
The latest romantic mystery from Pettersen (Thoroughbreds and Trailer Trash, 2012, etc.) involves the disappearance of an aspiring jockey.
Twenty-something Megan Spence is somewhat older than many of her fellow classmates at jockey school, but she doesn’t let that deter her from her secret aim: to investigate the recent disappearance of her brother, Joey, from the school a few weeks prior. Megan goes through the exhausting paces along with everyone else, from grooming to track riding to classwork. One of her instructors is the strappingly handsome Scott Taylor, who also happens to be a private investigator. Sparks fly between Megan and Scott from the moment they meet, but Megan’s private, independent spirit prevents her from revealing her secret. It doesn’t help matters that Scott’s close friend is Garrett Baldwin, the head of the school. According to Baldwin, Joey was a drug addict who quit the school and disappeared. But although Joey had issues with drugs earlier in his life, Megan knew that he was now clean. Megan’s relationship with Scott heats up, but she doesn’t know how far to trust him. Scott hides a heartbreaking past experience with a drug-taking fiancée, and when he finds heroin that’s been planted in Megan’s bag, he jumps to the wrong conclusion. Soon Megan is trapped in a life-threatening situation with a Mexican drug cartel, and Scott must conquer his inner demons in order to find her before it’s too late. Pettersen devotes many pages to Scott’s and Megan’s psychological musings, but readers may feel these ruminations slow the plot’s otherwise enjoyably rapid pace. Pettersen sticks to familiar genre patterns, and mystery and romance fans may find the plot contains few surprises, although the author’s detailed descriptions of the racing atmosphere brighten the story. She deftly develops the relationship between Megan and Scott, even if their relationship suffers from an overabundance of simple misunderstandings—although for many readers, that may simply add to the fun.
A somewhat formulaic story, enlivened by amiable characters and a robust setting.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2012
ISBN: 978-0988115125
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Westerhall
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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