A warm-hearted Jackie Collins–meets–Terry McMillan ode to sisterhood, with few surprises.
The path to true love is never smooth for three sexy black Los Angeles women who set a deadline for landing Mr. Right.
A New Year’s Eve wedding celebration spurs best friends Trista, Amaya and Viv to make a pledge to find themselves husbands within a 12-month period. Should be simple, right? After all, they have talent, beauty and drive to spare. But finding men does not seem to be the problem, just getting the right one to commit. Earthy single mom Viv longs for a full-time family with her son’s father, a successful plastic surgeon, but gets sidetracked by a smitten gangsta rapper; talent agent Trista seems to have met her match in smooth lawyer Garrett, but cannot get her college sweetheart Damon out of her mind; and starlet (and part-time hustler) Amaya hedges her bets with a strapping young basketball star in the hopes that her married music-mogul lover will become jealous enough to leave his movie star wife. This familiar story of friendship and self-realization from Millner (A Love Story, 2004, etc.), Teen People magazine executive editor Burt-Murray and Jane magazine associate editor Miller is peppered with Hollywood gossip about the African-American entertainment elite, along with several frank and funny sex scenes. These wannabe brides are far from chaste, and their unapologetic romps drive the love-yourself-first message better than some of the more conventional plot revelations. Through a series of crises that include a boyfriend on the down-low and a sick child, the friends are forced to face the flaws in their plan and deal with their own fears until they realize that they need each other far more than a ring.
A warm-hearted Jackie Collins–meets–Terry McMillan ode to sisterhood, with few surprises.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-076227-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
Reid’s tome on married life is as uplifting as it is brutally honest—a must-read for anyone who is in (or hopes to be in) a...
An unhappily married couple spends a year apart in Reid’s (Forever, Interrupted, 2013) novel about second chances.
When we meet Lauren, she and her husband, Ryan, are having a meltdown trying to find their car in the parking lot at Dodger Stadium after a game. Through a series of flashbacks, Lauren reveals how the two of them went from being inseparable to being insufferable in each other’s eyes—and in desperate need of a break. Both their courtship and their fights seem so ordinary—they met in college; he doesn’t like Greek food—that the most heartbreaking part of their pending separation is deciding who will get custody of their good-natured dog. It’s not until Ryan moves out that the juicy details emerge. Lauren surreptitiously logs into his email one day, in a fit of missing him, and discovers a bunch of emails to her that he had saved but not sent. Liberated by Ryan’s candor, Lauren saves her replies for him to find, and the two of them read each other’s unfiltered thoughts as they go about their separate lives. Neither character holds anything back, which makes the healing process more complex, and more compelling, than simply getting revenge or getting one’s groove back. Meanwhile, as Lauren spends more time with her family and friends, she explores the example set for her by her parents and learns that there are many ways to be happy. It’s never clear until the final pages whether living alone will bring Lauren and Ryan back together or force them apart forever. But when the year is up, the resolution is neither sappy nor cynical; it’s arrived at after an honest assessment of what each partner can’t live with and can’t live without.
Reid’s tome on married life is as uplifting as it is brutally honest—a must-read for anyone who is in (or hopes to be in) a committed relationship.Pub Date: July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1284-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
You’ll need your own detective’s notebook to keep tabs on all the characters and connections on display here. Even so,...
A tenacious reporter won’t let personal ties to a decades-old case stop her from finding the truth.
On the advice of her agent, Savannah Sentinel reporter and author Nikki Gillette is looking for fodder for her latest true-crime novel when she realizes that the perfect subject is about to be released from prison. Savannah’s notorious Blondell O’Henry has been locked up for some 20 years for the murder of her oldest daughter and Nikki’s childhood friend, Amity. Now that Blondell’s son Niall has recanted the testimony that put her away all those years ago, it looks as if she’ll be a free woman unless Nikki’s fiance, Detective Pierce Reed, can find a reason to keep her detained. Pierce and Nikki both work to discover what happened years ago at that cabin in the woods, though Pierce bridles at Nikki’s rather unconventional—all right, illegal—research methods. It seems to Nikki that the more she investigates, the more connections she discovers to her own family, beginning with the fact that her Uncle Alex was the original defense attorney on the case. But all of these uncomfortable connections make Nikki still more determined to learn the truth, even if she doesn’t like what that may mean.
You’ll need your own detective’s notebook to keep tabs on all the characters and connections on display here. Even so, Jackson (You Don’t Want to Know, 2012, etc.) shows a mastery of the true-crime thriller formula that will please fans.Pub Date: June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7582-5858-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
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