A sometimes-unbelievable novel that offers the melodramatic appeal of a telenovela.
In this poor-little-rich-girl YA story, a supermodel’s daughter suffers, loves, and dazzles.
Tall, gorgeous, 16-year-old Coco Rodriguez lives in a Chicago high-rise, abandoned there in early childhood by her jet-setting Argentinian supermodel mother, Magdalena, and left to the care of housekeepers. For three years, one housekeeper, Rosa, has abused the girl and told other people that Coco suffers from bipolar disorder. When Rosa’s wrongdoings are exposed, Coco’s life improves with a new housekeeper, Tia, who discloses that the new infant in the house—Bebe—is Coco’s sister. One day, the teenager meets Rob Banks, her penthouse neighbor, a handsome lawyer who has sole custody of a young daughter, Mila. Soon Mila and Bebe are having play dates as 28-year old Rob and Coco, now 17, fall in love. The teenager never tells Rob that she’s underage, and she also lets him believe that Bebe is her own daughter. Later, Rob is horrified when he learns that he’s unwittingly committed statutory rape, and he ends the relationship. However, Coco is secretly pregnant with Rob’s child. After Magdalena dies, the teenager becomes an instant hit as a model, taking over her mother’s fashion labels. She later finds herself in physical danger, but a vision of Magdalena grants her peace and purpose. Debut writer Orme gets things off to a rocky start in the story’s over-the-top opening section, which reads almost like horror fiction; in it, Rosa is painted as a broad, unpleasant caricature: “her double chins wobbled while spit flecked her fat lips.” The novel also never answers some head-scratchers, such as how the inexperienced Coco manages to successfully run a business. Lovers of fashion, though, will enjoy the fantasy of a supermodel’s daughter being showered with free designer outfits and instantly becoming a lauded model herself. Also likely to please are the details of Coco’s and others’ clothing designs and insider looks at the fashion world. Coco’s abandonment issues also deepen the story, as she learns to handle both independence and motherhood.
A sometimes-unbelievable novel that offers the melodramatic appeal of a telenovela.Pub Date: March 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9985953-1-3
Page Count: 444
Publisher: The Wow House
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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