Peter Blake is an architect who cares about the environment, and as a vegetarian who emphasizes sustainability in his...
Ashley’s debut novel tells the story of an idealist’s journey from criminal suspect to accepted messiah.
Peter Blake is an architect who cares about the environment, and as a vegetarian who emphasizes sustainability in his designs, he practices and preaches his beliefs. For his latest project, for example, he gives “instructive lectures to the workers about…the sustainable features he incorporated in the building.” One day, Peter finds himself mistakenly entangled in a double homicide on the construction site, and he becomes a wanted man. Forced to flee to a cabin in North Carolina, he hides while his trusted and lovely lawyer, Sofie, attempts to sort things out. Fortunately for Peter, his cabin is designed with the same environmental fastidiousness as his bigger projects: “Why pay for heat when the sun supplies far more than he ever needed, even in winter?” he reflects. Meanwhile, a fierce gentleman named Boris is attempting to track Peter down; he’s as skilled at investigation as Peter is at architecture, and he seems sure to get his man. Then the unexpected happens: After Peter leaves his woodsy hideaway, he emerges in a nearby church, where the churchgoers believe him to be the second coming of Christ. Seeing a rare opportunity for redemption, as well as a platform to preach his own sort of gospel, Peter becomes “The Man They Call Jesus.” He offers his seven principles to the world (the Fifth Principle, for example, is “Democracy, not Tyranny”). Peter must figure out how to survive in environments that are either accepting or hostile toward his message. The novel is slowed down at times by unenlightening details, such as when Sofie notes that a building’s “design uses as many plants as possible because plants absorb carbon dioxide and also give off life-supporting oxygen.” That said, the story does manage moments of great excitement: Will Peter really manage to convince people his message is worthwhile, and also avoid the aggressive Boris? Although some of Peter’s seven principles may strike some readers as obvious (“Almost no country on earth has all the natural resources it needs”), those intrigued by a TED-talking messiah will be eager to find out his fate.Pub Date: July 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-1496102621
Page Count: 548
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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