Next book

THE IRISH TEMPEST

While the plot sometimes lacks focus, this historical romance delivers compelling moments.

The fates of two families mesh with Ireland’s struggle for independence in this debut novel.

Courtland “Court” O’Rourke and Lacey de la Roche grew up in neighboring estates in southern Ireland. Now 20-year-old Court has just returned from cavorting in London to find Lacey, 10 years his junior, beating up a neighborhood bully and as furiously rambunctious as he left her. Court serves as an adoring yet protective older brother figure to Lacey, who’s being spoiled rotten by her wealthy widower father. But barely a year after his return, a scandal forces Court to enlist in the British army. He navigates military intrigue in India, falling into a tormented affair with the wife of his rival, while Lacey’s love of horses brings her into contact with the rakish stable worker Ransom “Ran” Longo. As Lacey matures into a headstrong and becoming young woman, Ran and a returned Court become rivals for her affections. Yet war looms—the two men become involved in an incident of death and betrayal during the 1916 Easter Rising, and Court struggles to recover after witnessing the frontline horrors of World War I. Ran, though he has a sexually charged relationship with Lacey, is never in a serious competition with Court. Court eventually ties the knot with Lacey and then struggles to balance his love of wife and family with his commitment to the dangerous project of Irish rebellion. Using several historical events and a large, socially diverse cast means that Sparrow must keep multiple plates spinning, and some plotlines and characters subsequently feel underdeveloped. Yet the author also finds emotional resonance, particularly when her players intersect with history—for example, when Lacey and Court argue over whether Irish freedom is worth dying for. The dialogue suffers from an overuse of exclamation points but is enjoyably saucy and sharp. Lacey is admirably self-possessed but would benefit from less reliance on the headstrong heroine “type” and more interior characterization. Some tone-deaf choices mar the sweet central romance, most notably when implying sexual tension between Court and an 11-year-old Lacey, and in portraying his brutal violence against his unstable mistress. 

While the plot sometimes lacks focus, this historical romance delivers compelling moments.

Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-9976851-1-4

Page Count: 282

Publisher: The Waxing Gibbous Press

Review Posted Online: April 24, 2017

Categories:
Next book

SUMMER ISLAND

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

Categories:
Next book

LAST ORDERS

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

Categories:
Close Quickview