A heartwarming and wholesome commentary on the importance of human connection.
A debut novel follows a young woman who comes to terms with her mother’s death by joining a community therapy group.
Gracie Anderson, this tale’s protagonist, agrees to join a support group at the local community center when her best friend, Chloe, insists it’ll be a great place to meet guys. As it turns out, Chloe has signed Gracie up to attend a women’s-only group. And the only thing Gracie, an accomplished college professor, has in common with these women is her dead mother. Gracie feels sure she does not belong in this haphazard crew, which includes a dominatrix, a librarian, a fashion consultant, and a homemaker. Reluctantly giving the support group a chance, Gracie finds that the women’s shared status as motherless daughters is sufficient to start a legitimate bonding process. Even better, the fashion consultant has a superhot twin brother, so there might be a guy to meet after all. As Gracie gets to know each of the women in her group and finally starts dealing with the grief she has harbored for years, she also begins an exciting courtship with Jack Bradshaw, the handsome twin. Unfortunately, just as the romance starts to flourish, Gracie’s childhood sweetheart, Sam Patterson, shows up, insisting that he’s finally ready to commit to her. As her relationships with these two suitors grow uncomfortably complicated, Gracie relies on her new friends from the therapy group to help her wade through the confusing love triangle. Thanks to many refreshing twists throughout this comical story, Reynolds avoids predictability and keeps the reader guessing until the end as to which man will ultimately win Gracie’s heart. Told in chatty, accessible prose, reminiscent of Liane Moriarty and Emily Giffin, Reynolds’ story draws the reader in by combining the hefty topic of debilitating grief with many lighthearted, nearly slapstick moments centered on friendship and romance. The author provides an in-depth look at the coping mechanisms used by motherless daughters and the potential effectiveness of human interaction in dealing with despair. This tale turns out to be an appealing beach read with a little meat on its bones.
A heartwarming and wholesome commentary on the importance of human connection.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5320-0676-0
Page Count: 404
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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