A winning debut featuring the kind of witty, appealing good girl that captures readers' hearts.
A young woman gets the break of a lifetime at a popular magazine—now if only everything else (money, apartment, love life, entire professional future) would fall into place.
A sort of modern-day Mary Tyler Moore, Dawn West is trying to make it as a writer. Though countless novels have offered the same conceit—lives in New York, works in media, searches for Mr. Right—Shumway’s Dawn is a young woman of substance, and her trials are of more consequence than the search for the perfect Little Black Dress. After Harvard, Dawn moves to New York, but along the way loses her college boyfriend Robert and finds herself barely solvent. Robert, they’re “still friends,” invites Dawn to his family’s annual summer fete in the Hamptons, but joining them will be his new girlfriend Lily. At once, Dawn sees Lily is everything she isn’t: rich and cultured in an effortless way and most importantly, unfazed by Robert and his privileged imperiousness. At the party, Dawn meets Regina, the editor of Charm magazine, and this meeting lands her a job putting together a spread for Charm’s 50th anniversary of their "Ten Girls to Watch" contest (Charm is an indistinguishable stand-in for Glamour, where Shumway worked on their corresponding 50th anniversary piece for the “Top Ten College Women” contest). While in her new office (the storage closet) at the archives, Dawn meets Elliot, secret author of the magazine’s bachelor column. Sparks fly and they begin to form the kind of relationship that seems too good to be true. And then he doesn’t call and sends a fruit basket for Christmas. Meanwhile, Dawn is tracking down 50 years’ worth of remarkable women, some quite famous, whose stories fill the novel and offer inspiration when things get tough—her roommate disappears, her building burns down, Elliot is not what he seems, and Robert has ended their friendship. Never fear, our Dawn finds help in unsuspecting places.
A winning debut featuring the kind of witty, appealing good girl that captures readers' hearts.Pub Date: July 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-7341-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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
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
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