A promising start to a California-set historical romance series.
Silver-fortune heir Brock St. Clair and Chinese fortune-cookie maker Blossom Sun meet a few days before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake in this debut title in a planned historical romance trilogy.
Rugged, handsome Brock ventures into Chinatown to fulfill fiancee Clarissa’s request to have fortune cookies at a dinner party she’s having for fellow Nob Hill socialite girlfriends. The visit proves life-changing. While buying the cookies, Brock spots Blossom, the lavender-eyed baker. They’re instantly attracted to each other. Blossom summoned the nerve to talk to Brock as part of a dare from two Chinatown pals, telephone operator Anna Mae and high-class prostitute Monique, to flirt with the first man she sees and not allow her father and grandmother to determine her life by marrying her off to a hulking Chinatown butcher. Brock and Blossom meet several times, and she visits at his ranch on the outskirts of town. The couple is there when the earthquake hits, causing them to rush back to the city to search for survivors, and Blossom receives earth-shattering news. First-time novelist Lentz weaves an effective underlying thread of suspense into what might otherwise be a rather tame from-different-worlds romance by heading up all chapters with a note explaining just how close the historic earthquake and its accompanying “firestorm” are to upending the characters and their plans. Adding spice are some surprisingly nuanced characterizations, with Clarissa not quite the snob cliché that one would expect and artistic aspirant Blossom more of a modern woman than wilting flower. Lentz also sets up some interesting tensions, most particularly intrafamilial competition. Overall, an admirable debut.
A promising start to a California-set historical romance series.Pub Date: April 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9962936-0-0
Page Count: 334
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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