A smart, sexy romance for readers who thrive on girl power.
In star-studded Hollywood, a blossoming romance between two talent agents grinds to a halt when their agencies merge and there’s only enough room for one of them.
Evie Abbey and Carter Aaron have the ultimate meet-cute when they both show up solo to a couples' Halloween party thrown by mutual friends. As the only single people in attendance, they bond over the awkwardness of their situation and the coincidence that they’re both dressed as characters from Harry Potter. Since they both know how demanding an agent’s schedule can be, they try to keep things platonic, until they experience one mind-blowing date. But there’s no morning-after glow once they arrive at their offices Monday morning to learn that their agencies have merged and the two of them will be working together until their contracts are up and a decision can be made on who stays and who goes. Though Evie and Carter do their best to act as a team, Evie’s frustration at the boys’ club atmosphere that emerges turns their workplace competition into a full-blown battle of the sexes. Carter is the boy next door, with an infectious sense of humor, while Evie is a fearless, feminist powerhouse. Her struggles as a modern woman, having to work twice as hard as a man for the same job, endure being called “girl” and “kiddo,” and exhaust herself over remaining assertive yet still approachable, elevate the book from a romantic comedy to a deeper tale about trying to have it all in a world that can be unforgiving to what’s often seen as the fairer sex. The romance is deliciously tense, as readers will be begging for Carter and Evie to just kiss already. Filled with high jinks, pop-culture references, and grin-inducing flirtation, it's truly a romance for the 21st century.
A smart, sexy romance for readers who thrive on girl power.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6581-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
A first adult novel from screenwriter and author Ephron (The Girl Who Changed the World, 1993, etc.) blends satire and soap opera to portray three overachieving sisters and their deteriorating father. Special-events planner Eve Mozell's 81-year-old father is in a psychiatric hospital with the ``dwindles'' (dementia, loss of motor skills), bragging in his more lucid moments to anyone who will listen about Eve's more visibly successful sisters: magazine editor Georgia and actress Maddy. The old man came unhinged around the time their mother left him for a red-haired biology teacher, which prompted him to call Eve, then at college, and tell her weepily, ``She ran off with that redwood.'' As the three phone- addicted Mozell girls continued to chat their way through boyfriends and nascent careers, their hard-drinking father phoned them constantly and kept them off-balance with increasingly bizarre behavior, culminating in a disastrous marriage to a diet-pill- popping nurse he met in a mental hospital. Now he's dying, and though Eve wants him gone, she can't bear to let go. Finding her husband, Joe, insufficiently sympathetic, she becomes phone pals with Dr. Omar Kunundar, who ran into her son's car; soon, this velvety-voiced purveyor of nose jobs is the receptacle for her escapist fantasies. Dad's conditions worsen, and the three sisters converge to irritate one another over his comatose body. Some mini- insights swarm up through these busy goings-on, but the characters, with the exception of sweet, mild-mannered Joe, are both underdeveloped and annoying. When time comes for an emotional payoff, Ephron delivers an absurd and punch-line-dependent deathbed scene straight out of the land of sitcom. A steady dose of low-grade humor helps, but ultimately this portrait of a dysfunctional family cum telephone circle is only modestly affecting.
Pub Date: July 18, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14052-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1995
Though Goodwin's romances are usually set in the past, they will often poke into the presentlike The Rising Storm (1993) and also this tale of 22 years of marital dustups, another family saga filled with chirrupy cocktail banter and posh digs. In England circa 1972, Eleanor (19) spends a satisfying night of lust with kind, gentlemanly, Foreign Office-bound Hugo, neighbor and brother of Eleanor's friend Agnes. The result, unfortunately, is that Eleanor ends up pregnant. Hugo is delighted and proposes immediately; Eleanor, not in love, thinks of abortion; while Agnes, in Paris, tries to help but fails, and Eleanor's sire, wealthy advertising magnate Walter, opens his wallet but not his heart. (Walter has been fairly rotten to Eleanor all her life because her mother, the beautiful, empty-headed Sara, left him and remarried.) Eventually, Eleanor gives in and marries Hugo. Then, five years later, he's transferred to BrazilGoodwin does a lively critical scan of the instant city Brasiliaand bored Eleanor, her daughter Joanna's care in the hands of loving servants, has a roaring love affair with a glittering Brazilian. She also tracks down her mother, married to a scary billionaire, ``still wanting love and missing the point,'' and still no mental giant. Meanwhile, Eleanor's affair is discovered, and Hugo furiously demands divorce. Back to London, divorce, a job, another marriage to attractive Sandy, an advertising hotshot, and a son, Paul. All of which make for happy days until Eleanor learns that Sandy has been bedding (among others) her best friend. So it's back to basics: divorce again, calm talks with Hugo, and grudging acceptance by his aging mother, a severe French countess who is now a devoted grandmother to Joanna and Paul in the decaying family mansion. A shade filmy, like most Goodwin romances, but with all the usual lilt and lift as chatty characters bumble along.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-13051-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1995
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