Escapist reading for fans of romances featuring dominant, controlling men.
A castaway’s idyllic life with the lone, handsome inhabitant of an uncharted isle becomes complicated in this novel of romantic suspense.
Larissa Wentworth feels stuck in a boring life at age 30, so she gladly accepts a friend’s offer to accompany him on a three-month South Pacific sailing voyage. Later, the boat sinks in a storm, and Larissa’s the sole survivor. After her raft reaches a seemingly deserted island, she’s resourceful in finding food, water, and makeshift shelter, but she wonders how long she’ll be able to survive. Then she runs into the only other person on the island: the bronzed, attractive Italian Nico Aromani. He has a home with plenty of conveniences, including a full refrigerator, running water, and even a bar—but no way to contact the outside world. Larissa soon learns that it’ll be two years before a visit from his supply boat, so she decides to make the best of it. She and Nico share an almost-instant attraction that leads to hot lovemaking sessions, and time passes quickly—but a complication arises when Larissa gets pregnant and gives birth prematurely. Nico arranges to get them off the island, but his efforts expose him to the danger that he’s been trying to avoid. Still, he returns to civilization in Italy with Larissa and puts into motion a complex plan that could allow them to return to a blissful life. In this debut novel, RO offers a fantasy scenario with appealing elements, including a house in a tropical paradise and a multimillionaire who’s also a great lover; it’s all spiced with criminal shenanigans and brave rescues. For fans of so-called alpha males, Nico will be a treat, but others may be annoyed by how he infantilizes Larissa; he withholds essential truths from her while also saying that she should “respect his word and take what he says on faith.” Also, several plot points strain credulity, such as the fact that Nico’s sister has successfully disguised herself as a bearded sea captain for six years, although others, such as Larissa’s survival strategies, seem backed by good research.
Escapist reading for fans of romances featuring dominant, controlling men.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4787-8368-8
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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