The quest for ``coke and pussy'' blisters with pretension in attorney Antoni's first novel, a Bahamian brat pack also-ran that's ten years too late and ten times as dull as its 1980s prototypes. Chris, the bored 25-year-old heir to the Angostura bitters fortune, whiles away his wealthy, white time frolicking on his native Bahamian beaches with black sidekick and buddy-since-the- cradle Shark. Together they snorkel, wave their ``dicks'' at anything that walks, and have sex with trashy cocaine-snorting tarts. But they retain lofty aspirations: Shark wants to open a nightclub and get out of the drug trade; Chris wants to go steady with (read: exclusively ``fuck'') Robin, the avant-garde artist he meets and talks Duchamp with. It can't be said Robin and Chris converse; that would imply that they listen to each other. Instead they deliver vacuous alternating monologues, which somehow lead to a loving relationship. But Robin is riddled with cancer, as (Freudianly enough) was Chris's mother. It only makes her more appealing; she becomes Chris's raison d'àtre. He nurtures her through the medications and pain (imagining that his semen is a panacea), and she weans him from coke, while Shark falls on hard times when an evil drug cartel tries to control his nightclub. The ending is only happy in that it rescues readers from more pages of repetitive blither. Our sneering hero's unabated preoccupation with getting off rivals that of a prepubescent boy who cannot stop repeating his new dirty word. When Chris is not vile, he is ``sensitive'' in a selfish, strained manner. Robin is Central Casting's weak (and, in this case, bald) beauty on a pedestal. Only Shark elicits sympathy: He gets dumped by his best friend for a lousy girl. Like sex without a climax: leaves you frustrated and overtired.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-88426-3
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
Another romance winner for Shalvis.
After helping her recover from a devastating accident, physical therapist AJ Colten rejected Darcy Stone’s romantic overture; now he needs her help acquiring grants for his program, placing both their hearts in danger.
Dedicated wanderer and travel journalist Darcy is sidelined—and lucky to be alive—after icy roads and an aggressive driver forced her car into a tree. Now, nearly a year after the accident, she’s relatively healthy and mobile but not hale enough to return to her globe-trotting career. While disappointed, she’s grateful to be alive and honest enough to admit that without AJ’s help, she’d still be in a wheelchair. Weighing her next steps, Darcy is doing a couple of part-time jobs to help pay the bills and fund her passion project of adopting former service dogs and pairing them with emotionally vulnerable patients, but it's nowhere near the income she made as a journalist. When AJ has the opportunity to meet a potential donor for his pro bono therapy work, he arranges to have a client travel with him to Boise, but the man backs out at the last second. Darcy reluctantly agrees to step in, since her relationship with AJ is tricky. First, he's her brother's best friend; second, she has a mad attraction to him; third, she works for him at his clinic; and fourth, she threw herself at him during her rehabilitation and he rejected her, pushing all of her inadequacy buttons. But she also feels grateful and obligated to him and knows this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. AJ isn't thrilled that Darcy is his best hope for funding since he has a ton of reasons to keep her at arm's length, reasons that become less compelling as they endure a snowbound weekend and a pretend love affair. Shalvis' newest Animal Magnetism title leverages emotional conflict and sexual tension into a satisfying romance, while physically and emotionally wounded Darcy learns lessons of love and acceptance that readers will cheer for.
Another romance winner for Shalvis.Pub Date: April 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-425-27018-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
Uneasy mix of escapism and medical soap opera.
Another Nantucket beach read from Hildebrand (Nantucket Nights, 2001), this one set in a fabulous ocean-side restaurant where the heroine’s frothy romance competes with the specter of cystic fibrosis.
Adrienne Dealey arrives in Nantucket from Aspen, having drifted from one resort hotel job to another for the last eight years. Despite a complete lack of restaurant experience, debonair Thatcher Smith immediately hires her as his assistant manager at the eponymous Blue Bistro, which he owns with chef Fiona Kemp and which will shut its doors for good after this final summer season. Adrienne moves in with a friendly waitress, buys some new hostess outfits and proves a fast learner of the ins and outs of the restaurant business, her success aided by her natural good looks. Hildebrand introduces lots of mouthwatering food and keeps the champagne flowing for the not terribly colorful cast of customers and staff—the unhappy married couple, the studly bartender, the lonely rich guy, the ambitious pastry chef. The inevitable romance between Adrienne and Thatch is complicated by Thatch’s devotion to Fiona, with whom he eats dinner every night after the restaurant closes. And, frankly, in a charisma contest, Fiona in her apron would win over Adrienne in her designer frocks hands down. A graduate of the Culinary Institute, petite, fierce-eyed Fiona is a brilliant chef who could be a star on the Cooking Channel, but she avoids all publicity and never leaves her kitchen. Gradually, Adrienne realizes that Fiona is sick, a secret that must be kept so that diners aren’t frightened away. As the summer winds down, Adrienne and Thatch find themselves deeply in love, but Thatch’s devotion to the devoutly Catholic Fiona, who has her own married lover, never waivers, and he marries her in a hospital ceremony just before her death. Not to worry: now he’s an available widower.
Uneasy mix of escapism and medical soap opera.Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-312-31953-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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