A modern fairy tale that moves apace but is burdened by uneven writing and characters who continually do things that seem...
A feckless Englishman who’s just inherited wealth and a title finds purpose when he falls for his enigmatic cleaning lady, an Albanian refugee with a vast well of secrets.
Maxim Trevelyan has just lost his beloved older brother, Kit, and inherited his title as Earl of Trevethick. He also discovers his old house cleaner has left and been replaced by Alessia, a beautiful young woman from Albania who has little beyond the clothes on her back yet plays the piano like a superstar. She’s reticent and modest and came to England to escape the brutal man her father wanted her to marry only to fall into the hands of sex traffickers. She’s managed to find a job and shelter with her mother’s friend, but when she’s threatened, it’s clear that Max has suddenly developed a heightened sense of protectiveness. He’s falling in love with her. How could he not? She’s beautiful, talented, and courageous, having survived these horrors. But when one evil man after another tracks her down, Max will use every property and penny at his disposal, even go to the ends of the Earth—or at least across Europe—to save her. James offers her first book outside the staggeringly successful Fifty Shades of Grey (2012) world, and the story can be compelling, in a "Cinderella" meets Perils of Pauline kind of way. We root for Alessia to be saved by the rich, handsome Max, who suddenly cares about all the things he’s intentionally ignored his whole life, yet we also ask ourselves why a woman who escaped sex traffickers at a gas station can’t be smarter when she’s hiding from them in a mansion or when she’s being dragged back to her hometown by the man she fled from in the first place. It’s also worth noting in light of James' earlier books that while sex is an important theme—mainly Alessia’s sexual awakening and the threat of sexual violence—there's only the slightest hint of BDSM, when Max hooks up with a one-night stand early in the book, which highlights Alessia’s innocence.
A modern fairy tale that moves apace but is burdened by uneven writing and characters who continually do things that seem out of character.Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-984898-32-6
Page Count: 498
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Astute, insightful, and descriptive storytelling; a strong step in a new direction for Singh.
Soon after a widowed pianist returns to her tiny hometown in coastal New Zealand, a woman disappears, echoing the events of a summer when she was a teenager and everything shifted for her and her friends.
After burying her husband, Anahera Rawiri leaves London to return to Golden Cove, which sits next to the South Pacific Ocean and inside a “primal and untamed landscape.” Anahera has been gone for years, married to a rich playwright, living in London, traveling the world as a classical pianist. She’s remained close to her best friend, Josie, but only vaguely kept in touch with other Golden Cove friends; the teenage dissensions that began along social and economic lines in their group of friends grew into adult schisms exacerbated by betrayals and rivalries. Almost as soon as Anahera settles into the remote cabin her mother left her, beautiful young Miriama, who works at Josie's cafe, disappears. When the village comes together to search for her, Anahera acts as a bridge for the local policeman, Will, who is still considered an outsider, and she soon realizes that her friends and the town may harbor dark secrets: “Everyone has hidden corners of their life, even the people we think we know inside and out.” As she and Will follow the clues and discover more about her friends, the townspeople, and each other, they connect in profound ways even as they begin to suspect the search for Miriama may be connected to the disappearance of three female hikers one summer when Ana was a teenager. Popular romance author Singh shifts to a new genre, New Zealand gothic, in which nearly every character—including the dense, ferocious landscape—has something to hide, and studying them is nearly as fascinating and compelling as solving the multifaceted mystery.
Astute, insightful, and descriptive storytelling; a strong step in a new direction for Singh.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-09913-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
To her usual mix of love, mystery, and passion, Roberts (Sanctuary, 1997, etc.)—author of 115 romancers in some 17 years—adds Renaissance art and a decidedly Medici-like family: the Joneses of Maine. Dr. Miranda Jones, nearly six feet with flaming red hair and a glacial reserve, is an archeometrist who specializes in the analyzing and dating of Renaissance bronze sculpture. Miranda hopes to secure a world-class reputation for herself by authenticating a 15th-century statue of the Dark Lady, one of the mistresses of Lorenzo the Magnificent, as the undiscovered work of a young Michelangelo. Miranda's mother, Dr. Elizabeth Standford-Jones, the emotionally remote director of the Standjo art lab in Florence, has summoned her daughter from the family's Victorian cliffside home in Jones Point, Maine, to test the statue. Meanwhile, Miranda's father, equally remote, is an archaeologist who spends more time at his digs than at home. In fact, no one in the Jones family has made a successful run at marriage, a failure that Miranda and her alcoholic brother Andrew call the Jones curse. As for the statue, when it's discovered to be a fake, Miranda sets out to prove that someone stole the original. In this she's helped by gorgeous art thief Ryan Boldari (half-Italian, half-Irish), who's come to Jones Point to steal yet another bronze, which also turns out to be a forgery. Ryan's plan had been to use Miranda as a pawn, but now, naturally, he finds himself falling hard for her. While the two search for bronzes, a standard-issue romance-novel psychotic is stalking them. Most readers will twig to the killer's identity: Here, as always, Roberts's sexual tension is more compelling than her suspense. Perhaps it's time to take a sabbatical from the pink sweatshop and turn her considerable wit and narrative skills to a more original piece of work.
Pub Date: March 23, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-14387-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1998
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