More cute than romantic, this love story should appeal to young teens.
A businessman’s psychotically jealous ex-girlfriend threatens a tender relationship.
A catastrophic accident, the result of a derailed train, leaves Jake McAllister, only a young boy, fatherless. He’s haunted by nightmares of the accident until a beautiful girl shows up in his dreams and offers him the comfort he desperately needs. Years later, Jake grows up to be a wealthy businessman but becomes caught in a loveless relationship with heartless gold digger Elizabeth Carstairs. For baffling reasons, Jake is incapable of seeing the full depth of her depravity but also seems dimly aware of his lack of romantic enthusiasm for her. Meanwhile, in a parallel plotline, Yvette Corvell suffers a deep loss when her husband dies in a tragic car accident. She uses the insurance settlement money to buy a ranch in Arizona and start a new life with her daughter, nearly 5-year-old Brandi. One day a tire bursts on Yvette’s car, and she is serendipitously rescued by Jake. He soon realizes that Yvette is a dead ringer for the girl who starred in his youthful dreams. Once she is convinced Jake’s womanizing days are behind him, the two begin a relationship and fall deeply in love. But Elizabeth, bankrupt from maniacally profligate spending, refuses to let Jake go without a fight. While some edge is given to the story by Elizabeth’s chilling amorality, this is otherwise so sentimental a story it seems written for very young adults. Debut author O’Donnell is irresistibly drawn to ostentatious displays of treacly emotion. Brandi wonders out loud to a dinner table of adults if her mother plans to find her a new father soon: “Since she got me a new fish, can she get me a new daddy?” The plot’s pace happily quickens when Elizabeth starts scheming to destroy Yvette. The author turns out to be extremely adept at inventively capturing Elizabeth’s fathomless wickedness. The prose can be a bit simplistic and is hampered by punctuation errors (for example, “Robert Johnson, head of the land acquisition department said”). The book is impossibly precious, which is simultaneously its principal virtue and central vice.
More cute than romantic, this love story should appeal to young teens.Pub Date: May 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4917-9629-0
Page Count: 306
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A smooth blend of suspense and romance. As ever, the author's trademark effortless style keeps a complex plot moving without...
Megaselling Roberts (River's End, 1999, etc.) goes to Napa Valley for the tale of an Italian-American family wine producers rocked by scandal and a series of murders.
Dynasty head Tereza Giambelli knows that her granddaughter Sophia is the only family member capable of running a multimillion-dollar wine business—and no one contradicts La Signora. It's just as well the lovely young woman is still single: Tereza has plans for her. The matriarch has recently married Eli MacMillan, the American founder of another famous wine company. Eli's grandson Tyler knows everything there is to know about producing wine, from the vineyard to the vat. Ruggedly handsome, intelligent and earthy, he's a perfect match for public-relations whiz Sophia—or so thinks Tereza. The two young people begin to work together; Tyler teaches Sophia the fine art of making wine and making love. But other family members hope to claim their share of the Giambelli fortune, and people start dying mysteriously, including Sophia's good-for-nothing father, Tony Avano. Long divorced from long-suffering Pilar Giambelli, Tony led an opulent, self-indulgent life that provides plenty of murder suspects. He might have been killed by the mob, or a jealous mistress, or his spoiled brother-in-law, Tereza's lazy son, who's produced a passel of brats with his foolish Italian wife in the hopes of making Tereza happy. Everyone has a motive, and nothing is what it seems, Sophia discovers, but Tyler stands by her. Then a bottle of tainted merlot kills a company exec. A tragic mishap caused by poisonous plants growing near the vines? Or deliberate product tampering intended to destroy the company? Sophia and Tyler will need to delve even deeper into the convoluted and sometimes unsavory history of the family and its three-generation business.
A smooth blend of suspense and romance. As ever, the author's trademark effortless style keeps a complex plot moving without a hitch.Pub Date: March 19, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14712-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
© Copyright 2026 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.
