A feisty, evanescent first novel, lively enough to keep a sunbather awake.
Well-fit, great-looking hotel employees in Nantucket prowl for love..
Everyone at the Nantucket Beach Club and Hotel this summer wants something, and wants it badly. The receptionist, Love, is so obsessed with getting pregnant that she sees each male guest as a potential sperm donor. Bill, who owns the place with his wife Therese, wants his 18-year-old daughter Cecily to agree to take over the hotel. But Cecily’s one desire is to fly to Rio for a reunion with her well-endowed Brazilian boyfriend. For Therese, concerned about Bill’s failing heart and dreading Cecily's impending independence, all would be well if only Cecily would marry Mack, the hotel's manager, who loves the Beach Club as if it were his own—though he has a long-term girlfriend, Maribel, who is desperate for him to propose. On top of all this, the head bellman, Vance, having lost the manager's job to Mack 12 years ago, has marked this as the summer when he'll finally take his revenge. At the center of all the turmoil, easygoing Mack simply wants everyone off his back while he decides whether to make the alluring island his home or return to his farm in Iowa. With Maribel pursuing Mack, Jem (another bellman) pursuing Maribel, Vance pursuing Love, and Love pursuing everyone, the club is awash with hormones, and quarrels break from one minute to the next. The ever-changing cast of hotel guests—a sexy suspected drug dealer, an extracurricular flame of Mack's, a generous dying man—adds to the mix. After a crescendo that begins with Vance taking Mack's decision into his own hands and culminates with a hurricane that leaves the hotel engulfed in sand, the characters find all their obsessive needs gone—carried off, as if by the wind—letting peace reign.
A feisty, evanescent first novel, lively enough to keep a sunbather awake.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-26125-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2000
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable...
An unlucky woman finally gets lucky in love on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii.
From getting her hand stuck in a claw machine at age 6 to losing her job, Olive Torres has never felt that luck was on her side. But her fortune changes when she scores a free vacation after her identical twin sister and new brother-in-law get food poisoning at their wedding buffet and are too sick to go on their honeymoon. The only catch is that she’ll have to share the honeymoon suite with her least favorite person—Ethan Thomas, the brother of the groom. To make matters worse, Olive’s new boss and Ethan’s ex-girlfriend show up in Hawaii, forcing them both to pretend to be newlyweds so they don’t blow their cover, as their all-inclusive vacation package is nontransferable and in her sister’s name. Plus, Ethan really wants to save face in front of his ex. The story is told almost exclusively from Olive’s point of view, filtering all communication through her cynical lens until Ethan can win her over (and finally have his say in the epilogue). To get to the happily-ever-after, Ethan doesn’t have to prove to Olive that he can be a better man, only that he was never the jerk she thought he was—for instance, when she thought he was judging her for eating cheese curds, maybe he was actually thinking of asking her out. Blending witty banter with healthy adult communication, the fake newlyweds have real chemistry as they talk it out over snorkeling trips, couples massages, and a few too many tropical drinks to get to the truth—that they’re crazy about each other.
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable as well as free.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2803-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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