A funny, frank, and refreshingly mature take on the familiar will-they-or-won’t-they romance template.
A college hockey player finds his vow of celibacy tested when he meets the campus beauty.
This final installment of Kennedy’s (Bad Apple, 2018, etc.) Briar U trilogy focuses on a supporting character from the earlier volumes: hockey star Hunter Davenport. He’s so bitterly disappointed that Briar’s hockey team “didn’t make it to the national championship” that he’s decided to take a vow of sexual abstinence until the end of the season. It’s tough on him (“I take out all my sexual frustration on the ice,” he thinks, but readers won’t believe him). And his pledge doesn’t stop him from appreciating all the lovely women at campus parties. But in a psychology class, he meets smart, gorgeous Demi Davis. Demi immediately notices how handsome he is (“too attractive for his own good”), and soon she and Hunter are paired in a psychology experiment in which she plays the doctor and he the patient. In short order, strong sexual tension builds between the two. Hunter doggedly maintains his “monk” status even as the chemistry between them heats up. Demi admires his stunning looks and is amused by his quick wit (When setting up their next class meeting, he texts her: “Make sure you’re wearing tight spandex pants so I can objectify you”). But she has mixed feelings about Hunter (“He is either the best or the worst. I still haven’t decided”). Kennedy unfolds the story with smooth confidence and a great deal of sure-footed humor. The book’s whole supporting cast is well developed. And both Hunter and Demi are sparkling, enjoyable fictional creations, often unpredictable but also entirely believable, dealing with each other in the sexually frank manner that characterizes notable contemporary romance titles. Hunter’s resolve about his love life feels overdone in the novel’s final third, but the author’s prose is so energetic that only the pickiest readers will find it distractingly unrealistic— in fact, they may love the character all the more for it.
A funny, frank, and refreshingly mature take on the familiar will-they-or-won’t-they romance template.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9995497-6-3
Page Count: 422
Publisher: Elle Kennedy Inc.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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