An engaging and often riveting story of love, idealism, and betrayal.
In this debut novel, a young American singer discovers romantic intrigue and danger in Paris in 1960.
At age 19, Alycea Androvna is ready to pursue a career in music, a dream she nurtured throughout a childhood marked by tragedy and poverty. Born and raised in New York, she helped raise her siblings after the death of her alcoholic father. Following the death of her grandmother, she takes her inheritance and leaves New York for Paris, where she plans to spend a year establishing her singing career. A dedicated activist, she joins the Paris-based organization Belief in Animal Rescue Causes. She is hired as a singer at Le Restaurant Ledoyen and catches the eye of Andre Moreau, the owner, and his best friend, Marcus, the place’s business manager. Andre’s business interests also include his family’s cosmetics company, Chez Beauté. She develops a friendship with Marcus and his son, Henri, and discovers the warmth and stability of close family ties. At the same time, she is seduced by Andre’s charm and magnetism. After Alycea is injured in a bombing at BARC headquarters, Andre proposes marriage and she accepts. Andre hopes to start a family as soon as they marry, but Alycea wants to continue her singing career. As their wedding approaches, secrets about Chez Beauté threaten to destroy Alycea’s Paris dream. Helene’s novel is a sweeping romance with dynamic, multilayered characters and vivid settings that moves with the fast pace of a thriller. The story focuses on Alycea’s efforts to establish a singing career in Paris and the complex relationships she develops with Marcus and Andre. Alycea is a winsome heroine whose passion for music is matched by her love for animals and her commitment to their safety and protection. Her involvement with BARC establishes the groundwork for a well-developed subplot involving the group’s efforts to expose companies that engage in product testing on animals. The gripping narrative is told through chapters that alternate between the first-person perspectives of Alycea, Marcus, and Andre as well as several supporting characters, including Andre’s sister, Deirdre, and the heroine’s friends at BARC, Netty and Warren.
An engaging and often riveting story of love, idealism, and betrayal.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4787-6888-3
Page Count: 420
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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