Has some biting moments, but Brett and Layla’s often silly problems don’t always make for compelling conflict.
Coming-of-age comedy meets Gen Y love story in this tale of a rough patch in a young marriage, made worse by the wife’s extremely close connection to his family.
Together since high school, pretty Layla and hunky Brett Foster have what many would consider an enviable life. She’s a cheerful fixture at all his football games (he coaches a winning college team) and loves his close-knit family as if it were her own. In many ways it is. When Layla’s mother passed away during her teens, Brett’s family took her in, giving her the support her absentee dad wasn’t capable of. She plays poker with Brett’s dad Bill; offers dating advice to his socially awkward bother Scott; and has a pet photography business with his acerbic lesbian sister Trish. But on the cusp of turning 30, Brett starts to see Layla’s tightness with his clan as a hindrance rather than an asset; he feels left out, not to mention confused by a wife who acts kind of like a sister. In a turn of events that shocks everyone, he asks for a divorce and moves out. Stunned, devastated and possibly in denial, Layla turns to the Fosters for support, in effect pitting Brett’s own family against him. What follows is a no-holds-barred game of one-upsmanship between the estranged couple, including a “custody agreement” giving her alternative weekends with the Fosters. Brett starts dating an attractive new colleague and tracks down Layla’s long-lost dad, a failed rock star she barely remembers. Crane (Forget About It, 2007, etc.) gamely depicts the real-life pitfalls of a committed relationship. Immature behavior on both sides leads to some serious soul-searching, including Layla’s realization that she might be just a tad too cozy with her in-laws.
Has some biting moments, but Brett and Layla’s often silly problems don’t always make for compelling conflict.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-553-38623-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
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
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