A surprisingly engaging soap-opera romance with a slum setting.
A New York philanthropist and Caribbean ex-stripper with a dying daughter discover new love and purpose together in this debut novel, the first installment of a trilogy.
While his sassy girlfriend (and work colleague) Donna Cruz derides him for being pompous, there is no denying that Robert Beaufort, 50, has suffered grievous loss, with his wife and twin daughters tragically killed in a train accident. The newspaper printing executive has since turned his life to philanthropy, forming the Kids of the World charity. He travels to San Cristobal, a small Caribbean island, hoping to get its president’s guarantee that a Kids of the World donation will be used to help those in need in its oppressed slum region. During his stay on the island, Robert witnesses the horrific injury of a man resulting from the slum’s ridiculous and hazardous infrastructure conditions (there is an uncompleted pedestrian bridge). Robert also gets hurt and ends up entering the slum for treatment, where he meets Julianna Miranda, 27, who has just left her job as a stripper to run her own store in the slum. She’s also the unhappy wife of Pedro Miranda, the man Robert saw injured, and the mother of Alba, dealing with a deadly heart condition. Robert is increasingly drawn to Julianna and determined to help Alba. Through various machinations, he secures funding for Alba’s care. By the novel’s end, Robert and Julianna admit and express their love, but various factors, including island politics and Pedro’s further incapacitation, pose new challenges for this unlikely pair. Carroll, who has newspaper and Caribbean humanitarian experience, has crafted a tale that has somewhat annoying male-fantasy elements (ah, the middle-aged man gets the former stripper!), but ultimately elicits sympathy and rooting for his lead characters as well as colorful secondary cohorts. The author also defies expectations in several key places in this narrative (Donna and Julianna, for example, never engage in battling-for-Robert catfights), making this novel an admirably nuanced read. Carroll also ends this work by offering a teaser of upcoming twists, including island-wide upheaval and a new pregnancy, thus whetting interest in the main couple’s further adventures.
A surprisingly engaging soap-opera romance with a slum setting.Pub Date: March 14, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Vanity Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2016
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
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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