Less snarky and broader in scope than the usual Lauren romance—a twist that offers readers something unexpected and new.
A movie star gets a rewrite for her disastrous first love story in the latest from Lauren (The Unhoneymooners, 2019, etc.).
Tate Butler is on a trip to London with her grandmother when she meets Sam Brandis and his adoptive father. Luther, Sam explains, and his wife, Roberta, who is Sam’s biological grandmother, raised him as their own to salvage a family scandal. Tate can relate. Her father, Ian Butler, is a movie star, and ever since her parents split up, she, her mother, and her grandmother have been hiding from the spotlight under a different last name. Just between them, Tate adds, she loves her mom, but she longs to be an actor like her dad. With that, Sam becomes Tate’s confidant and her first love. But when she returns from London, her life is turned upside down—Sam has leaked her story to the press, and now she can never go back to normal. Fast-forward to a few years later, when the bulk of the story takes place, and Tate has landed the starring role in a new film—about a white woman and a black man who fall in love and fight for civil rights in the 1960s—and her famous father will be playing her father on screen. The problem is, Sam wrote the screenplay under a pen name. And by the time Tate finds this out, it’s too late to back out. Stuck together on a remote set location for the duration of the shoot, the two rarely see each other through the fog of Tate’s many handlers and co-stars. Tate’s frosty relationship with her father also chills the air. But the story of how Sam came up with the script idea and why he sold her out so many years ago is worth the wait, and the rich family backstories add sweetness to the superficial Hollywood setting.
Less snarky and broader in scope than the usual Lauren romance—a twist that offers readers something unexpected and new.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9742-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal...
A gumbo seasoned with ghosts, love, and murder on the bayou.
When 30-something Declan Fitzgerald of Boston, a successful lawyer and a member of a large and loving family, breaks off his engagement to very suitable Jessica, he knows he needs to change his life. Lawyering is not fun anymore, so, recalling Manet Hall, an old deserted plantation house he once visited with law school classmate and New Orleans native Remy, he buys the property and moves down south. Declan is also a gifted craftsman, a born decorator, and very, very rich. Soon, he meets beautiful Lena, who’s visiting her grandmother Odette, Declan’s friendly Cajun neighbor. Declan is as certain that Lena is destined to be his wife as he was that Manet Hall would become his home. But, surprise, Lena has a troubled past (like the house) and is determined to resist Declan’s courtship. While he suits Lena and works on the place, Declan experiences troubling dreams. It seems he’s actually reliving the novel’s parallel story, which took place in 1899. In that year, the maid, Abbey Manet (from whom Lena, coincidentally, is descended, and who married wealthy Lucian Manet), was raped and murdered by her brother-in-law Julian as she nursed her baby daughter. Her body was dumped into the bayou by her mother-in-law, who despised her. And grief-stricken husband Lucian, away at the time, being told that Abbey had run off, committed suicide. Now, in an unconvincing twist of gender and reincarnation, it’s Declan who hears a baby crying , experiences childbirth and rape as the reincarnation of Abbey, while Lena is Lucian. The two accept all this with equanimity, and, Manet Hall’s secrets revealed, it becomes the setting for predictable and much foreshadowed resolutions.
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal fans will enjoy.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14824-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
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