by Catherine Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2012
Spiritual empowerment more so than weapons firepower (though there’s that too) is the aim of this farfetched...
A social worker is catapulted into a whirlwind of romance and danger when she meets the love of her life, superstar actor and part-time CIA operative Sam Donovan.
Author Lewis’ globe-trotting romantic action-adventure may remind some of Danielle Steele with a dose of Helen MacInnes. Beautiful Alexandra Maitland flees a love-starved, dysfunctional childhood in Cleveland and tries to put her private pain to good use as an anti-gang counselor in Los Angeles. Still, she suffers secret anxieties and crises of confidence. When her job gets cut, thanks to office politics, Alex is sent to Hawaii on an enforced vacation, where she must remain due to the threat of gang violence against her back in Los Angeles. There, she finds the neighbor of her vacation villa to be none other than Hollywood superstar Sam Donovan, who ministers to Alex intimately when she suffers life-threatening sunstroke, falling for her in the process. But two near-death experiences are not enough for this heroine. Alex’s missionary brother is seized by North Koreans and, thanks to the stalwart Sam’s government ties—he is a freelance CIA undercover agent, by the way—the couple goes to the locked-down dictatorship on a combined getting-married and rescue mission. There’s torture (gruesome indeed), submarine rides, movie-set jealousy and a further lingering threat from Max, a rogue ex-KGB operative turned rogue ex-CIA operative (whew), and his network of assassins. Fast-paced prose compacts this into far less than the doorstop of a saga it sounds, but one still wishes Lewis had taken more time to color in the outlines. The Hawaiian scenes are best for flavor, character-building and ambiance, but other jet-set locales pass with little or no adjectives wasted on them. Sinister and in-the-headlines North Korea is so utterly nondescript that the place of the lovers’ gruelingly hellish ordeal may just as well have been Syria, Pakistan, Ruritania or the Klingon Homeworld (or Cleveland again), and desultory villain Max is also pretty flat. An emphasis on the heroine’s inner growth and lambent New-Age spirituality (Alex seems to recollect herself and Sam as oft-tragic soul mates from many thwarted past lives) distinguishes this from genre competitors that put the accent on bling, celebrity name-dropping and designer brand labels.
Spiritual empowerment more so than weapons firepower (though there’s that too) is the aim of this farfetched girl-meets-boy-who-is-CIA-and-Hollywood-hero-all-in-one yarn.Pub Date: July 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1469925011
Page Count: 286
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
More by Catherine Lewis
BOOK REVIEW
by Catherine Lewis ; illustrated by Joost Swarte
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
129
Our Verdict
GET IT
New York Times Bestseller
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Share your opinion of this book
More by Max Brooks
BOOK REVIEW
by Max Brooks
More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 27, 2024
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.
A bear is hunting prey in Wyoming’s Bighorns. And not just any bear.
It’s bad enough that Clay Hutmacher, who manages the Double Diamond Ranch, has lost his son, Clay Jr., to a vicious attack by a grizzly bear. What’s much worse is that Clay Jr.—who’d been about to pop the question to game warden Joe Pickett’s daughter, Sheridan—is only the first of the victims over an exceptionally broad geographical area. Marshal Marvin Bertignolli is clawed and bitten to death over in Hanna. Sgt. Ryan Winner is found bleeding out north of Rawlins. Former Twelve Sleep County prosecutor Dulcie Schalk, one of two survivors of an ambush, doesn’t survive her final encounter. The four experts chosen to kill the grizzly rope Joe into their expedition, but since their quarry keeps turning up far from the last sighting, the most meaningful confrontation the Predator Attack Team has is with a pair of Mama Bears, animal rights activists who demand due process for Tisiphone, as they’ve dubbed the presumed killer. Box, who’s far too canny to leave Tisiphone alone on center stage, follows Joe’s old antagonist Dallas Cates as the ex–rodeo star is released from prison and embarks on his revenge tour, which takes him to Lee Ogburn-Russell, an inventor whose life Dallas saved, and Axel Soledad, a correspondent who shares so many enemies with Dallas that he suggests they go after them together. Franchise fans will appreciate new details about Joe’s complicated family, the obligatory high-country landscapes, and yet another corrupt law enforcer.
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593331347
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
Share your opinion of this book
More by C.J. Box
BOOK REVIEW
by C.J. Box
BOOK REVIEW
by C.J. Box
BOOK REVIEW
by C.J. Box
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.