A love story that becomes elevated by a dynamic psychological crime drama.
A young reporter investigates a series of murders involving body image in this mix of romance and thriller.
Camarin Torres is on the brink of graduating from NYU with no full-time job to show for all of her ambition and hard work—that is, until a serendipitous meeting on a train with Lyle Fletcher, the new owner of a failing magazine called Trend. Fletcher, impressed with Camarin’s intelligence and passion for justice, decides that she’s exactly what Trend needs to head in a more serious editorial direction. They also sense a mutual attraction, which Fletcher, a middle-aged widower, feels uncomfortable admitting given his position of authority. On her first day of work, Camarin becomes intrigued by a grisly murder case involving the owner of a Chicago weight-loss organization. A quick search of similar cases yields the insight that a string of killings has followed the revival meetings of Terry Mangel, a man who has made a fortune on programs that tell people to love their bodies just the way they are. Every murder victim has in some way been involved in dieting or fat-shaming. As Camarin becomes more invested in tracking down the killers, she faces the resurfacing of uncomfortable memories surrounding her dead twin sister, who struggled with her weight and self-confidence. Camarin’s passion for her work rises along with her ardor for Fletcher, who, unbeknown to her, has his own secrets concerning these homicides. Barr (Expired Listings, 2016) has a knack for building stakes and maintaining a steadily intense pace throughout. The novel occasionally suffers from clunky lines, particularly in the romance sections, as when a sexually heated Camarin thinks, “While she wanted to stand firm in her resolve against discrimination, her impulsive streak beckoned her to explore the one thing she realized she wanted even more.” But the unusual premise of the murder plot brings a freshness to the thriller sections, and Camarin faces absorbing (if slightly reductive) dilemmas involving the ethics of journalism and the body-image industry.
A love story that becomes elevated by a dynamic psychological crime drama.Pub Date: July 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9977118-4-4
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Punctuated Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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