Unusually child-centered for chick-lit—and considerably too long—but engaging enough.
A perky debut considers whether a Londoner’s life of drinking, clubbing and one-night stands is more enviable than her friends’ bumpy marriages and parenting woes.
Tessa King is single, blonde, gorgeous and popular, although finding dates is getting harder as she doesn’t “do married men.” Her group of friends is important to her, and she is godmother to most of their children, including Francesca’s 16-year-old son Caspar, whom she tries to discourage from his flirtation with drugs. Then there’s privileged Helen, who still needs propping up in her struggles with her new-born twins, post-natal depression and a jerk of a husband; and Billy, whose ex-partner is being dishonest about child support. One of Tessa’s oldest friends is Ben (now married to Sasha), whom she’s known since they were teenagers. Ben doesn’t have children but Tessa wishes he did, and with her, except that she is fond of Sasha too and has no wish to break up their happy marriage. Instead, Tessa turns to a new admirer, James King, until she learns he has a wife and two children. When Helen and her husband are killed in a car accident, Tessa has to fight Helen’s unpleasant mother over custody of the twins and is forced to confront her own role in her friends’ lives. She confesses her feelings to Ben and he declares his love for her too, but eventually Tessa does the right thing and turns him down. Having found a good home for the twins, she resumes her life of work and godmothering—and maybe getting back together with James, who turns out to be separated after all.
Unusually child-centered for chick-lit—and considerably too long—but engaging enough.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-06-123260-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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