Steel (Johnny Angel, p. 556) softens her style in this quiet, poignant romance, generally avoiding the glitzy excesses and...
Second-chance romance in a windswept beach town.
Ophélie, the French-born wife of an American physicist and inventor, struggles with depression after her husband and son die in a plane crash. Not that the marriage was perfect—far from it. Ted was a moody genius who did his damnedest to ignore 15-year-old Chad’s emotional problems and Ophélie’s timid complaints. At least she still has Philippa, her 11 year-old daughter, known as Pip, to console her, and group therapy to help her through what’s referred to delicately as “the grieving process” (yes, this is in California). When Pip, ignored in turn by her airhead babysitter, wanders the beach alone and meets an artist, Ophélie is frightened and comes to sudden life, fiercely scolding the man, who insists he meant no harm. Matt Bowles remembers his own daughter at that age, though his children are grown. He lost touch with them after a bitter divorce and his wife’s relocation to New Zealand. A likely story, thinks Ophélie, who is nonetheless drawn to the attractive painter. A relationship blossoms as they share life stories and walks on the beach with the family retriever and happy Pip. Ophélie is surprised to find joy again—but her best friend Andrea could have told her that. Andrea, a free spirit who loved and left many men, has finally settled down at 44, a blissful single mother to baby William, fathered by artificial insemination and an anonymous donor—these days, who cares? Not Ophélie, who dotes on the adorable tot. Eager to do something for others, she volunteers for a homeless outreach program and serves these lost souls with bravery and compassion. But a bitter betrayal awaits her, as the truth of little William’s parentage is revealed.
Steel (Johnny Angel, p. 556) softens her style in this quiet, poignant romance, generally avoiding the glitzy excesses and silly contrivances of some previous titles. Easy to read, easy to like.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-33630-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
Flamboyantly written, if a little too conventionally peopled and plotted.
A treasure hunt leads a young girl to discover her mother’s darkest secret.
In 1936, 9-year-old Alice has been consigned by her mother, Selina Lennox Carew, to the care of her Lennox grandparents at their ancestral stately home, Blackwood Park. The reason for this custodial arrangement is Selina’s trip to Southeast Asia with Alice’s cold, distant father, Rupert, who needs to visit his ruby mines in Burma. Alice is kept abreast of her parents’ travels through her mother’s letters, delivered by longtime family servant Polly. Alice is also directed, by Polly, to discover clues set by her mother, leading the girl on a treasure hunt that helps lift her out of her depression. Alice’s Blackwood sojourn alternates with chapters set in 1925, when young Selina, age 22, is setting the London tabloids ablaze with her antics as one of a cadre of Bright Young People, devil-may-care upper-class flappers and their escorts. But everything changes when, on a madcap treasure hunt of her own, Selina meets Lawrence Weston, a struggling portrait painter and aspiring photographer. The two are drawn inexorably into an affair. Selina's choice of a passionless marriage to Rupert over life with her soul mate, Lawrence, is the fateful decision on which the novel turns, and her rationalizations will be a little too pat to satisfy most readers. Nor will readers be long baffled by Alice’s hunt—given the 1925 backstory, the solution to the puzzle is obvious almost from the start. But genuine surprises do await, even if they entail punishing Selina, after the manner of post-Code Hollywood melodrama, for her breach of class boundaries, disregard for propriety, and unladylike smoking and drinking. The characters verge on stereotypical although there are no true villains and only the domestics lack flaws, particularly Polly and Mr. Patterson, the gardener who introduces Alice to the redemptive joys of nature. However, Grey’s use of sensory detail, enlivening the most mundane of scenes, redeems this novel, too.
Flamboyantly written, if a little too conventionally peopled and plotted.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-06679-4
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
Another romance winner for Shalvis.
After helping her recover from a devastating accident, physical therapist AJ Colten rejected Darcy Stone’s romantic overture; now he needs her help acquiring grants for his program, placing both their hearts in danger.
Dedicated wanderer and travel journalist Darcy is sidelined—and lucky to be alive—after icy roads and an aggressive driver forced her car into a tree. Now, nearly a year after the accident, she’s relatively healthy and mobile but not hale enough to return to her globe-trotting career. While disappointed, she’s grateful to be alive and honest enough to admit that without AJ’s help, she’d still be in a wheelchair. Weighing her next steps, Darcy is doing a couple of part-time jobs to help pay the bills and fund her passion project of adopting former service dogs and pairing them with emotionally vulnerable patients, but it's nowhere near the income she made as a journalist. When AJ has the opportunity to meet a potential donor for his pro bono therapy work, he arranges to have a client travel with him to Boise, but the man backs out at the last second. Darcy reluctantly agrees to step in, since her relationship with AJ is tricky. First, he's her brother's best friend; second, she has a mad attraction to him; third, she works for him at his clinic; and fourth, she threw herself at him during her rehabilitation and he rejected her, pushing all of her inadequacy buttons. But she also feels grateful and obligated to him and knows this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. AJ isn't thrilled that Darcy is his best hope for funding since he has a ton of reasons to keep her at arm's length, reasons that become less compelling as they endure a snowbound weekend and a pretend love affair. Shalvis' newest Animal Magnetism title leverages emotional conflict and sexual tension into a satisfying romance, while physically and emotionally wounded Darcy learns lessons of love and acceptance that readers will cheer for.
Another romance winner for Shalvis.Pub Date: April 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-425-27018-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
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