In her third steamy romance about the gem-dealing Donovans (Amber Beach, 1997, etc.), Lowell joins Nora Roberts in the celebration of lusty heroes with large, loving families. Archer, the eldest of the Donovans, is a pearl lover and former government operative. Though he has forsaken the terrible loneliness of trouble-shooting for “Uncle” and gone to work in the mineral import-export business of his family, he hasn’t forgotten his deadly skills or lost his hair-trigger reflexes. Which is all to the good when Hannah McGarry, the widow of his half-brother Len, involves him in the search for a priceless set of pearls that has become implicated variously in the shadowy interests of the Chinese, Australian, and US governments. After Len is murdered at his Australian pearl farm, Hannah sends for Archer because her own life is in danger. Len, it seems, was a ruthless, obsessed fellow who had developed a priceless black pearl, and now the major pearl interests believe that Hannah knows its secret formula, though in truth Len never told her any part of his culturing methods. A bitter paraplegic, he merely exploited her genius for sorting pearls and withheld his love. Hannah now makes the mistake of believing that Archer is the same species of ruthless tough guy that Len was. While Archer can be as ruthless as he has to be, underneath those hard muscles and behind that hairy chest, he’s just a love-hungry teddy bear who has always had the hots for Hannah. As Lowell interweaves Hannah and Archer’s romantic tussle with a virtual handbook of pearl culturing, buying, history, and lore, Archer sneaks the voluptuous Hannah out of Australia and back to the protection of his family home in Seattle. Supported by the Donovans, the pair vanquish the bad guys along with all the barriers to marriage and babies. Strong, interesting, and sexy characters—and, happily for lovers of romance and priceless jewels, there are still three Donovan siblings to go. ($150,000 ad/promo)
Pub Date: June 8, 1999
ISBN: 0-380-97404-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
Less chick-lit beach read than old-fashioned Joan Crawford tearjerker.
In Hilderbrand’s fifth Nantucket novel (The Blue Bistro, 2005, etc.), a vacationing college student arranges to meet with her mysterious godmother, a former restaurateur of renown, to learn more about her dead mother.
Despite ambivalence, 19-year-old Columbia sophomore Renata has become engaged to Cade. While visiting his wealthy family at their Nantucket summer home, she calls her godmother Marguerite and arranges to have dinner. Renata wants to know more about her mother Candace, who died on the island 14 years earlier. Renata does not realize that Marguerite was so overcome by guilt and despair after Candace’s death that she had a psychotic break, sold her very successful restaurant and has been living for years as an island recluse. The novel follows Renata and Marguerite’s lives hour by hour throughout the day leading up to the dinner Marguerite prepares for them. While shopping for the meal, Marguerite visits key people from her past who force her to relive what happened years earlier: how she met her long-time, part-time lover Porter, and through him his half-sister Candace, who became her dearest friend; how Candace fell in love and married Dan, owner of the Beach Club; how they had Renata and moved away; how in a moment of despair after Porter’s final rejection, Marguerite declared her love for Candace; how shortly thereafter Candace was hit by a drunk driver while jogging. Meanwhile, Renata is struggling against Cade’s insufferable mother and against her own attraction to the handsome houseboy. She calls her father to announce her engagement, subconsciously knowing Dan will come to the rescue. He does, but not before Renata has come face to face with near tragedy and run away to Marguerite, leaving Cade’s engagement ring behind. Dan, Marguerite and Renata finally reunite, truths are told and old wounds healed.
Less chick-lit beach read than old-fashioned Joan Crawford tearjerker.Pub Date: June 30, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-32230-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal...
A gumbo seasoned with ghosts, love, and murder on the bayou.
When 30-something Declan Fitzgerald of Boston, a successful lawyer and a member of a large and loving family, breaks off his engagement to very suitable Jessica, he knows he needs to change his life. Lawyering is not fun anymore, so, recalling Manet Hall, an old deserted plantation house he once visited with law school classmate and New Orleans native Remy, he buys the property and moves down south. Declan is also a gifted craftsman, a born decorator, and very, very rich. Soon, he meets beautiful Lena, who’s visiting her grandmother Odette, Declan’s friendly Cajun neighbor. Declan is as certain that Lena is destined to be his wife as he was that Manet Hall would become his home. But, surprise, Lena has a troubled past (like the house) and is determined to resist Declan’s courtship. While he suits Lena and works on the place, Declan experiences troubling dreams. It seems he’s actually reliving the novel’s parallel story, which took place in 1899. In that year, the maid, Abbey Manet (from whom Lena, coincidentally, is descended, and who married wealthy Lucian Manet), was raped and murdered by her brother-in-law Julian as she nursed her baby daughter. Her body was dumped into the bayou by her mother-in-law, who despised her. And grief-stricken husband Lucian, away at the time, being told that Abbey had run off, committed suicide. Now, in an unconvincing twist of gender and reincarnation, it’s Declan who hears a baby crying , experiences childbirth and rape as the reincarnation of Abbey, while Lena is Lucian. The two accept all this with equanimity, and, Manet Hall’s secrets revealed, it becomes the setting for predictable and much foreshadowed resolutions.
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal fans will enjoy.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14824-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
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