by E.E. Orme ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 9, 2017
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
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001
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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by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996
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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