Sensual for a Regency, and genuinely fun.
Lady Sophie York is set to elope—but with whom?
Sophie has no way of knowing that her fiancé, a dull but dependable nobleman, has injured his leg and can’t get up the obligatory ladder. Under cover of darkness and in disguise, he’s sent his best friend Patrick Foakes (younger twin brother of Alex Foakes, the hero of Potent Pleasures, 1999) in his stead to fetch her. Adventurous to a fault, the rakish and handsome Patrick ascends—but doesn't come back down. After all, Sophie is astonishingly beautiful, and one taste of her sweet lips makes him claim a second, bringing a change of heart to the befuddled Sophie. While waiting at the window, in fact, she’d been thinking it over and had decided not to elope with Braddon Chatwin, Earl of Slaslow. So Patrick seizes this golden chance to bed her—and, several weeks later, to wed her. Sophie’s French maman is furious. How could her only child spurn the Earl of Slaslow for a mere Honourable like Patrick? Well, her headstrong daughter has advanced ideas about love, and worse, an excellent education, which should prove useful when she and Patrick (just to make amends) scheme to fool the town by turning a pretty wench the jilted earl fancies into a semblance of a lady. And her education will prove even more useful when Sophie takes up the study of Turkish, hoping to accompany Patrick, an envoy for the Crown, to Turkey, where he must persuade the eccentric Sultan to become England’s ally against Napoleon. The story weakens as Sophie encounters a pair of villains masquerading as Turks, who threaten the rather silly Sultan with an exploding inkwell. The intrepid and intelligent Sophie, of course, saves the day, and Patrick falls in love with her all over again by the end of this lively and vividly written tale.
Sensual for a Regency, and genuinely fun.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-33361-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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