Melodramatic romance that rewards readers in for the long haul.
In this debut novel, a Texas woman reminisces about her past loves.
In 2003, an old friend drops by while Cherie, the owner of an antiques shop in Galveston, Texas, waits for a delivery. Loud, outspoken Delilah knows some of Cherie’s secrets, including that Cherie once worked as a waitress/dancer at the Jewel Box, a topless club in Houston. When the mahogany bar from the Jewel Box finally arrives at the shop, it triggers an extended flashback that consumes the bulk of the narrative. In 1968, desperate to earn money to care for her toddler, newly divorced Cherie agrees to join her friend Kat at the Jewel Box. A small-town girl, Cherie is so petrified of this new venture that she vomits in the car on the way. She adjusts, though, and befriends the bar’s manager, Beau, who offers her sensible, fatherly advice and book recommendations. At the club, Cherie also meets Gabe, an unhappily married carpenter and her polar opposite. He’s quiet; she’s chatty. He’s rude; she strives to be ladylike. After their first kiss, she falls for him. During the next 30 years, the two experience an intense on-again, off-again relationship. In attempts to move on, both intermittently become involved with other people over the years. Liberal use of references to current events and pop culture keeps the book firmly tethered to the time period, and most secondary characters, particularly Cherie’s daughter and Gabe’s mother, feel fully developed. Yet, although scenes at the club are usually vivid, later pages feel superficial and rushed in an attempt to cover 30 years in 300 pages. Especially in the early pages, the dialogue-heavy narrative sometimes relies on artificial-sounding conversations to move the plot or impart descriptions—“You’re five foot three and I’m five seven”—though later pages contain some delightful gems: “I loved doing his laundry and folded his socks and underwear as though they were the shroud of Turin.” The story contains some crude language but, given its early topless-club setting, surprisingly few extended sex scenes. Nonetheless, the neatly done happily-ever-after ending should satisfy romance readers.
Melodramatic romance that rewards readers in for the long haul.Pub Date: March 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481107150
Page Count: 308
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
BOOK REVIEW
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