The fresh air helps turn this office romance into a truly romantic adventure.
At a corporate retreat in Colorado, two co-workers compete for a cash prize, but they secretly hope to win each other’s hearts in this novel.
Raye Soto is one of 25 employees chosen for a week of team-building exercises in the great outdoors—and the chance to collect a $50,000 bonus. Her ex-husband’s substance abuse problem has left her to raise her son, Andy, by herself, and she needs money for his college tuition. She is paired with military veteran Desmond “Des” Emmett, who was recently transferred to the Denver office and needs money for his ailing little sister, Claudia. This conflict of interest is their most compelling trait—neither one of them is willing to sacrifice a loved one for the other, but to what extent will money come between them? Raye is Mexican-American, and Des has Irish ancestry. As they bond over scavenger hunts, karaoke, and stories of past heartbreak, they lament their dilemma even more when frantic phone calls from home bring more bad news. Des and Raye are heading up the mountainside to fix a hiking trail when a flash flood threatens to turn a friendly competition into a true race for survival. And their quick thinking could save the day for the entire company, making their cooperation more urgent—and ultimately more fun—than their rivalry. More sweet than steamy, McCune’s (Falling Like a Rock, 2014, etc.) love story unfolds at a realistically cautious pace while offering intriguing lead characters. Office politics frequently change the temperature from chilly to heated and back to neutral. Although Des spars with Raye over discrimination in the workplace, he champions her as his teammate. He even stands up for executive assistant Julia Flora after Raye tells him she has been overlooked for professional development. Raye, meanwhile, can fend for herself. Aside from a few minor errors (“Yeah Tell me about the staff room”; “Desnoted”; “Nothing to ityet”), the novel is a swift and satisfying read.
The fresh air helps turn this office romance into a truly romantic adventure.Pub Date: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77223-351-3
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Imajin Books
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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