Part thriller and part mystery, this delightful story of friendship also celebrates sex, love, and family.
Three Black women who occasionally sit at the same lunch table at work are thrown together and become fast friends when their male colleague is murdered.
Venus McGee, Draya Carter, and Jackie Benson are all strong women who are leaders within their separate departments at Baltimore-based Billings Croft Construction, yet they couldn't be more different from one another. Venus is known as a calm and in-control senior project manager who has been passed over for promotions in favor of Rufus, an incompetent, petty, womanizing jerk; she holds herself accountable for every small choice she makes so that it does not reflect poorly on her father, a city councilman. Draya has a much different reputation: She asks no forgiveness for having slept her way into a job as the company's fiscal director, and she wields her sexuality as a tool to help get what she wants. Jackie, the third in the group, is the facilities manager at the firm’s building, a hard worker who is quick to defend boundaries and struggles with loneliness after her family shunned her for being a lesbian. When Venus gets into an argument with Rufus at the office Christmas party, the three woman head back to Venus’ apartment to commiserate on his extreme unpleasantness. The next morning, Rufus summons Draya frantically to his house for work help and she arrives to find him dead. As a Black woman in Baltimore, she does not trust what the police will do to her if she reports Rufus’ murder, so she calls Venus. What follows are a wild few weeks as the women try to protect themselves from the police investigation, figure out who murdered Rufus, and work through their opinions on potential, current, and former lovers as they become not only fast friends, but also family. This is Homicide: Life on the Streets meets 9 to 5 meets Bridgerton in a story that screams to become a TV series.
Part thriller and part mystery, this delightful story of friendship also celebrates sex, love, and family.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-3112-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Haphazard and undemanding.
A sports agent’s first official client is the man she dumped years ago in college.
After two years of hard work as an underling, Nora Mackenzie is finally being promoted to full-time sports agent. She’s worked hard, kept quiet, and allowed men in the office to call her Mac—a nickname she hates—all to show she’s a team player and “one of the guys.” Unfortunately, her boss instructs her to sign Derek Pender, a football player coming off an injury, who happens to be the man she heartlessly dumped in their senior year of college. Derek signs with her for revenge, seeing it as his opportunity to pay Nora back for callously breaking his heart eight years earlier. He insists she be at his beck and call: answering his emails, running his errands, cooking dinner for his dates. He also refuses to let her explain why she broke up with him without warning or explanation. Nora feels she has no choice but to acquiesce to Derek’s humiliating demands, since she’s worked too hard to let him ruin her dream job. She hopes he’ll thaw and they might become friends, but Derek’s bad behavior is designed to hide the fact that he’s still in love with her. Nora’s characterization is uneven, veering between anger at how she’s treated in the male-dominated field to immature bickering and bantering with Derek. Although Adams likely meant for Derek and Nora’s interactions to have an enemies-to-lovers vibe, the characters instead seem juvenile and stuck in the past. The novel is fueled by a string of tropes—second chance romance! married in Vegas! only one bed!—each randomly deployed to keep the book going despite thin characterization and wan plotting.
Haphazard and undemanding.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593723678
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dell
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
