A solid romance with thrills, sex, and plenty of Southern charm.
In Lea’s debut romance novel, an emotionally damaged chef and a reclusive carpenter fall for each other while dealing with fallout from their pasts.
Twenty-five-year-old Bryant “Ant” Pembroke, the adopted daughter of the late Tom and Carly Pembroke, is part of Munford, Kentucky’s wealthiest and most-hated family. As the story opens, she’s just tracked down her biological father, Ty Monroe, who’s on his deathbed with stage 4 liver cancer. Ant never got to know him, but he was a friend and surrogate father to 26-year-old Orion “Ore” Black. Standing at 6 feet 6 inches and perpetually clad in flannel, Ore is, for Ant, “the image of a Brawny Paper Towel commercial.” When the pair meet at Mumford Memorial hospital, their mutual attraction is immediate, but each feels that they don’t deserve the other. Ant’s insecurity stems from a childhood of verbal abuse from her father as well as from her relationship with Rodney Picoult, a stalker ex-boyfriend who texts her five times a day; Orion considers himself a monster after a life-changing night in county jail eight years before. As their relationship progresses, there’s no dearth of action; in the span of a single night, Ty dies, Ant finds out the identities of her biological grandparents, Ant and Ore have sex for the first time, and the Pembroke estate gets trashed. And just when Ant and Ore begin to trust each other, there’s a close call involving Rodney. Overall, this is a compelling, well-conceived romance. Ant is an admirable heroine, fiery and capable of taking care of herself, while Ore comes off as a Southern gentleman with rugged sex appeal. There’s a cute makeup scene that’s reminiscent of The Notebook—rain pours down as the couple argues outside Orion’s beloved 1968 Chevy truck before they make amends (and love) in a house that he built. Lea’s prose can be repetitive; Ore always smells of “sawdust” and “spice,” and Ant is said to smell of lemon and rose multiple times. However, the novel is redeemed by the author’s ability to capture the intensity of physical attraction—how mundane actions, such as chopping vegetables or carrying furniture, suddenly become irresistible. She also shows a firm command of her book’s erotic scenes.
A solid romance with thrills, sex, and plenty of Southern charm.Pub Date: April 11, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 393
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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