Another Bridget Jones clone, with similar obsessions about weight, drink, fags, and all the sex nobody's getting. Mostly...
When an imaginary boyfriend isn't enough . . . hire an escort.
Sophy Metcalfe is almost 30, and her interfering mother thinks it's high time she got married. Sick of the nagging, Sophy invents “Dominic,” a tall, handsome, up-and-coming investment banker who seems to have a lot of excuses for never showing up in person. But Mum insists he not wiggle out of escorting Sophy to her sister Belinda's wedding. Desperate, Sophy calls a highly respectable London escort service, which supplies Josh Carmichael, former Royal Marine. Josh is predictably tall and handsome, with a “crookedy” smile and “greeny-browny eyes like a river with the sun on them.” Not that a sophisticated woman like Sophy would fall in love just like that. First, there must be much irritable banter as she and Josh get to know each other before the ceremony. While Josh convinces the clueless, chatterbox mother and pompous father that he is indeed Dominic, Sophy’s dirty-minded friends know about her scheme and tease her relentlessly. Sophy simply sniffs, points out that theirs is just a business relationship, and continues to invent adjectives ending in “y.” After the wedding, she yearns for his company and starts playing girlish games to get his attention, like pretending her scruffy friend Ace is really her lover to make Josh jealous. Josh's countermove: showing up with an infant under each arm. Sophy is outraged, assuming he's married, but softens when she finds out he's babysitting his sister's twins just to be nice. The thin plot thickens a bit when Belinda jilts her new husband just before the honeymoon. Sophy, meanwhile, decides there are no sure things in life and she might as well gather her rosebuds. Fortunately, Josh is waiting for her with open arms.
Another Bridget Jones clone, with similar obsessions about weight, drink, fags, and all the sex nobody's getting. Mostly familiar debut, with a few funny lines.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-380-81897-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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