Smoothly written, with appealing characters and an engaging storyline, this will surely be a winner with romance fans.
After a professional tragedy, Gabi Romano can’t decide what to do next and escapes winter in Eternity Springs, Colo., for a temporary dogsitting job in the Caribbean.
Gabi is drifting. After a justified shooting as a sheriff’s deputy, she has no desire to return to that life, nor does she want to help out in her mother’s bed-and-breakfast forever. Ready for a change, she winds up watching puppy Bismarck on exclusive Bella Vita Isle. She soon meets Flynn, the hot pool guy next door, and Cicero, the local glass genius. After spending time with Flynn, she realizes he's more than just a pool guy—and he definitely harbors some secrets—but he's gentlemanly and easygoing, and she's far too immersed in her new life studying the craft of glass blowing with Cicero to worry. Feeling as if she’s finally found her purpose, Gabi spends hours a day at the studio, then relaxes in the evenings with her sexy neighbor. Everything comes crashing down on their idyllic existence, however, when they take a sailing excursion and are violently attacked. In the aftermath, Gabi learns the truth about Flynn’s past and rejects him. She returns to Colorado and distances herself emotionally from her time on Bella Vita. However, the following Christmas, she learns that Flynn is in Eternity Springs, in desperate need of healing, and wonders if maybe she’s overlooked an important aspect of her life’s purpose. In the eighth Eternity Springs novel, March continues her best-selling combination of romance and suspense with hints of angelic intervention, and for the most part, everything works, with a few minor misses (e.g. Gabi moves too quickly and glibly away from Flynn, the feel of deus ex machina is occasionally too strong, and sometimes the various tones of the storytelling seem dissonant).
Smoothly written, with appealing characters and an engaging storyline, this will surely be a winner with romance fans.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-54230-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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