Although her acerbic prose is a welcome diversion, Adler’s tell-don’t-show moralizing may have unintended consequences:...
Another frothy adventure in the South of France, Adler’s follow-up to There’s Something About St. Tropez (2009).
In this third of a series begun with Those Malibu Nights (2008), reality-TV detective Mac Reilly and his perennial fiancée, sleek Latina stunner Sunny Alvarez, return. In a huge hissy after Mac postpones their nuptials yet again, Sunny boards a Christmas Eve flight from Los Angeles to Paris with her cranky Chihuahua. In first class, she encounters Eddie, a handsome CEO who sympathizes with her distress, and recommends, instead of frigid Paris, Monte Carlo—he even books her hotel room from his laptop. (He’ll later follow her there.) In Monte Carlo, Sunny is spotted by superannuated (and aptly-named) Baltic Eurotrash predator Kitty Ratte. Kitty, constantly looking to exploit the vulnerabilities of the young, rich and beautiful to salve her own bitterness at being none of the above, almost befriends Sunny before being shortstopped by Sunny’s movie-star BFF, Allie. While the women await Mac’s contrite appearance, a crime spree is in progress: In Paris and Monte Carlo, ritzy jewelry emporiums specializing in rare diamonds have been ripped off in spectacular heists. Each time, one robber targeted the youngest and prettiest store employee. The assailant pistol-whipped her Parisian victim, shattering her cheekbone. In Monte Carlo, a young mother died after being shot in the face. Upon arriving in France, Mac is drawn into the robbery-murder investigation. Kitty finds her mark in Eddie and somehow ensnares him in a laughably inept blackmail scheme. Maha, gorgeous Indian slum-dweller turned world-renowned jewelry designer, recruits Sunny (she’s back with Mac, but still determined to reassert her independence) to courier gems back to Mumbai. The whodunit is so transparent that Adler’s real agenda shines through—demonstrating that the young, rich and beautiful are more deserving than the old, ugly and disadvantaged.
Although her acerbic prose is a welcome diversion, Adler’s tell-don’t-show moralizing may have unintended consequences: Readers might sympathize more with Kitty than with her smugly entitled jet-setter nemeses.Pub Date: July 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-38515-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
Though Roberts (The Reef, 1998, etc.) never writes badly, her newest mystery romance is more inconsistent than most. Little Olivia MacBride, daughter of two golden Hollywood superstars, wakes up one night to see her coked-up father holding her mother’s bloody body, a scissors in his hand. After her dad is led off to prison, Liv is sent to live with her grandparents, who run a successful lodge in the Olympic rain forest on the Washington coast—a location far across the continent from the Maryland shores of Roberts’s Quinn trilogy, but one that allows her to explore another place of life-giving scenic wonder. And when Liv grows up and becomes a naturalist/guide, she gets to take us on lots of eye-dazzling tours. Into her sheltered paradise comes Noah Brady, the son of the police detective who arrested Liv’s father and has been her friend since childhood. Noah has grown up to be a bestselling true-crime writer, and, against Liv’s will, he wants to write his next book about the MacBride murder case. (Liv’s dad, about to be released from San Quentin, is dying of brain cancer.) Though Liv fights her attraction to Noah, he’s a persistent boy, and on an extended and very sexy camping trip, the two become lovers. Meanwhile, the real murderer, whose identity will probably be obvious to most readers, leaves his own trail of violence up to Washington and a final prime-evil shoot-out. Added to Roberts’s poorly drawn mystery and her interlude of swell lusty love is her usual theme of how wounded children and inner children are healed and nurtured by good nuclear families. If the conventional wisdom is true, that romance readers never tire of reruns of the same old same old, then Roberts won’t have disappointed them.
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-399-14470-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
An entertaining page-turner.
Terri Rayburn is devastated that her perfect man belongs to someone else, but once Nate Taggert realizes that Terri's the one for him, her complicated past still stands in the way of their being together.
Terri is attracted to Nate the moment she lays eyes on him, and soon they fall into an easy partnership at the Virginia lake resort she runs with her father. Nate is upfront about being engaged to the mayor’s daughter, Stacy, but she’s in Europe for a few weeks, and it quickly becomes clear to Terri that Nate and Stacy aren’t a great match. However, Terri, whose mother left when she was 2, has always had a problematic relationship with the citizens of Summer Hill. Since Leslie disappeared, the town gossip has made sure everyone remembers her as a promiscuous vixen, a label which tainted Terri as she got older and made her look like a problem when, as Nate begins to understand, she was really a victim. It’s clear to everyone around them that they are falling in love, but even as Nate realizes it himself, Terri is adamant that they can’t be together. She won’t steal him from the popular Stacy because it would mean she’d never be able to live in Summer Hill, and she won’t abandon her father. Deveraux spins an intriguing and unorthodox romance, continuing her Summer Hill branch of the Taggert/Montgomery series with two characters who have some unique, interesting obstacles in their paths and navigate through them with secrets uncovered and old wounds healed. The story is well plotted, though Nate is unnecessarily oblivious sometimes and the book takes an unexpected swing into romantic suspense territory in the last quarter. The solved mystery resolves Nate and Terri’s conflict, though the villain’s motivations seem a little cartoonish.
An entertaining page-turner.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7783-5124-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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