A page turner full of mystery and horror that’s unfortunately marred by a weak ending.
A girl with a troubled past takes an undercover assignment that may be the death of her.
Grace Harley is a household name for all the wrong reasons. Implicated in a government scandal, she gave birth to a stillborn baby while she was in prison. Now she earns her living as a party girl in the swinging ’60s. One of her former lovers, newspaper editor Tony Fledgwood, offers her an assignment to go to the mysterious North Country great house of D’Espérance (The House of Doors, 2012, etc.). A former World War II army hospital, the sprawling mansion is now a hippie commune that’s swallowed up one of Tony’s reporters sent to investigate. Taking on the name and character of meek Georgie Hale, Grace is welcomed by the community, run by a former naval officer and the nurse companion known as Mother Mary. She’s taken under the wing of Tom, a young man who hero-worships the charismatic Webb, who is creating a new language. Since her attempts to induce an abortion brought about her baby’s death, Grace has been tormented whenever bells are rung, and the ones tolling at D’Espérance scourge both her spirit and her body, for her wrist keeps opening and bleeding. The house seems intent on magnifying her torment as she fights to discover the truth about the commune and save her sanity.
A page turner full of mystery and horror that’s unfortunately marred by a weak ending.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8156-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
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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