An inspirational novel about hard-won love finding its truth path.
A desperate young woman reaches out to an unlikely source of help in novel in Patterson’s debut romance novel.
When readers first meet 22-year-old Mallory Scott, she’s hit rock bottom in her life: She’s a traumatized survivor of an abusive relationship and being stalked by her abuser, Jake, while living in a women’s shelter in Charlotte, North Carolina. Even the tense, guarded sanctuary of the shelter is soon violated when Jake finds her there; she narrowly escapes and travels with a well-meaning stranger to a town in Pennsylvania called Paradise, which is also the home of handsome young Eric Matthews. Eric is angling to land a site-planning job with a Lancaster County grandee named Mr. Chamberlain—and smitten by the man’s beautiful niece, Victoria (“her blonde hair had shimmered in the sunbeams from the skylight,” he dreamily recalls, “the light scent of her perfume still lingered in his memory”). Since Chamberlain’s cousin is the well-wisher who brought Mallory to Paradise and set her up with a job as a housekeeper in the Chamberlain home, the two storylines converge almost immediately, and the ensuing narrative juxtaposes Eric’s growing relationship with Victoria and Mallory’s increasing sense of comfort with living and working for the Chamberlains. Victoria and her mother are instantly imperious and condescending to her, but Mr. Chamberlain himself is the soul of kindness, even offering to pay for her to return to school. The background tension stretching through the book's middle section—“Had she really escaped? Would she be strong enough to make this work?”—is reflected in Mallory’s dealings with Victoria, and in her own emotions as her attraction for Eric grows. Patterson skillfully weaves these lines together, bringing Mallory and Eric closer despite every obstacle they encounter. The author has a weakness for making these barriers one-dimensional—Victoria and her mother are cartoon villains, for instance—but the emotions depicted throughout the novel are touchingly realized, and the undertones of Christian faith are subtly handled.
An inspirational novel about hard-won love finding its truth path.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64669-038-1
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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