Bridget Jones with a chainsaw: don’t be surprised if this is one of the more popular beach-reads of the summer.
Sick of all those losers you’ve been dating? Send them to Cassandra’s: she’ll have them shaped up in no time.
Best known for his tongue-in-cheek “Rex” dinosaur p.i. mystery series, Garcia (Matchstick Men, 2002, etc.) shows himself an adroit student of the chick-lit genre—before giving it a serious goosing. Cassandra French is likable, all things told, even though at 29 she’s a self-involved in-house lawyer for a big movie studio with a bevy of annoying ticks (such as assigning herself letter grades in all aspects of life). Still, she generally comes off as well meaning. It doesn’t hurt that her two best friends, Claire and Lexi (the latter, like her dogs, is “beautiful, vicious, and easily distracted”), are even shallower, so Cassandra’s general lack of interest in work or anything outside finding a man or dealing with her under-house-arrest mother, doesn’t look so bad. Garcia pulls off a pretty amazing sleight-of-hand here: just when he has you settling into a vacuous, glittery, forgettable read, he drops the bomb. The finishing school of the title isn’t a metaphor, and those “boys” in Cassandra’s basement whom she’s always running home from the office to feed aren’t dogs. They’re three men she’s kidnapped and kept, chained and drugged, while she puts them through a months-long program of cultural, social, and sexual etiquette training. Even though they’re cuffed and weak from all the morphine and low-protein foods, the guys—all buffoons who disappointed her in some fashion, including one who pulled a drunken grope during a blind date at a baseball game—appreciate what Cassandra’s doing for them. This proves helpful when a fourth one (Brad Pitt–hot actor Jason Kelly) gets chloroformed and tossed into the population after seducing Cassandra for less-than-romantic reasons. Garcia knows the conventions so well that his satire slithers by almost unnoticed.
Bridget Jones with a chainsaw: don’t be surprised if this is one of the more popular beach-reads of the summer.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-073031-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2004
Above-average formula fiction, making full display of the author’s strong suits: sense of place, compassion for characters...
Female rivalry is again the main preoccupation of Hannah’s latest Pacific Northwest sob saga (Firefly Lane, 2008, etc.).
At Water’s Edge, the family seat overlooking Hood Canal, Vivi Ann, youngest and prettiest of the Grey sisters and a champion horsewoman, has persuaded embittered patriarch Henry to turn the tumbledown ranch into a Western-style equestrian arena. Eldest sister Winona, a respected lawyer in the nearby village of Oyster Shores, hires taciturn ranch hand Dallas Raintree, a half-Native American. Middle sister Aurora, stay-at-home mother of twins, languishes in a dull marriage. Winona, overweight since adolescence, envies Vivi, whose looks get her everything she wants, especially men. Indeed, Winona’s childhood crush Luke recently proposed to Vivi. Despite Aurora’s urging (her principal role is as sisterly referee), Winona won’t tell Vivi she loves Luke. Yearning for Dallas, Vivi stands up Luke to fall into bed with the enigmatic, tattooed cowboy. Winona snitches to Luke: engagement off. Vivi marries Dallas over Henry’s objections. The love-match triumphs, and Dallas, though scarred by child abuse, is an exemplary father to son Noah. One Christmas Eve, the town floozy is raped and murdered. An eyewitness and forensic evidence incriminate Dallas. Winona refuses to represent him, consigning him to the inept services of a public defender. After a guilty verdict, he’s sentenced to life without parole. A decade later, Winona has reached an uneasy truce with Vivi, who’s still pining for Dallas. Noah is a sullen teen, Aurora a brittle but resigned divorcée. Noah learns about the Seattle Innocence Project. Could modern DNA testing methods exonerate Dallas? Will Aunt Winona redeem herself by reopening the case? The outcome, while predictable, is achieved with more suspense and less sentimental histrionics than usual for Hannah.
Above-average formula fiction, making full display of the author’s strong suits: sense of place, compassion for characters and understanding of family dynamics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-36410-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2008
A treat for fans of The Evil Dead or Zombieland, complete with affordable solutions for better living.
A hardy band of big-box retail employees must dig down for their personal courage when ghosts begin stalking them through home furnishings.
You have to give it up for the wave of paranormal novels that have plagued the last decade in literature; at least they’ve made writers up their games when it comes to finding new settings in which to plot their scary moments. That’s the case with this clever little horror story from longtime pop-culture journalist Hendrix (Satan Loves You, 2012, etc.). Set inside a disturbingly familiar Scandinavian furniture superstore in Cleveland called Orsk, the book starts as a Palahniuk-tinged satire about the things we own—the novel is even wrapped in the form of a retail catalog complete with product illustrations. Our main protagonist is Amy, an aimless 24-year-old retail clerk. She and an elderly co-worker, Ruth Anne, are recruited by their anal-retentive boss, Basil (a closet geek), to investigate a series of strange breakages by walking the showroom floor overnight. They quickly uncover two other co-workers, Matt and Trinity, who have stayed in the store to film a reality show called Ghost Bomb in hopes of catching a spirit on tape. It’s cute and quite funny in a Scooby Doo kind of way until they run across Carl, a homeless squatter who's just trying to catch a break. Following an impromptu séance, Carl is possessed by an evil spirit and cuts his own throat. It turns out the Orsk store was built on the remains of a brutal prison called the Cuyahoga Panopticon, and its former warden, Josiah Worth, has returned from the dead to start up operations again. It sounds like an absurd setting for a haunted-house novel, but Hendrix makes it work to the story’s advantage, turning the psychological manipulations and scripted experiences that are inherent to the retail experience into a sinister fight for survival.
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59474-526-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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