In this sensual tale, words stoke the body and the imagination. With prose that is both witty and current, Dickey chronicles...
Four friends, nicknamed the Blackbirds, push each other to live their best lives as they navigate life and love in Los Angeles.
As the book begins, four women are on the cusp of a jump from an airplane. We see not only their fear, but their willingness. Their joy. Their deep-seated trust in one another. This is how Dickey (Naughtier Than Nice, 2015, etc.) introduces the Blackbirds. Together, they are a fortress of mutual love, respect, and support. Cycling through each of their birthdays over the course of a year, the novel interweaves four points of view as relationships—not just romantic, but familial and platonic—are built, fall, and change. Indigo, the pride of her Nigerian parents, must make an advantageous match worthy of her heritage, leading to conflict and new possibilities. Nerdy Destiny, always in the shadows, balances an old secret with a new relationship. Meanwhile, Ericka, divorced and in remission from cancer, acts as big sister to the much younger trio but needs guidance in her own life, particularly when it comes to a complicated attraction to Destiny’s father. And Kwanzaa is bitter and lonely after ending a six-year relationship, having learned about her fiance’s cheating in the worst way possible. Within fewer than 10 pages, all four women spring to appealing life, regardless—or perhaps partly because—of their flaws. They have one rule: “Always build each other up. No crabs, no barrel, never pull each other down.” They may gibe, but they support each other through all the weirdness they encounter.
In this sensual tale, words stoke the body and the imagination. With prose that is both witty and current, Dickey chronicles the pothole-filled journey four modern black women take to find love.Pub Date: April 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-98410-9
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
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An entertaining, affecting romance.
A downtrodden nanny sends off a quick note of appreciation to a soldier; when it lands on a major’s desk, it sparks an unexpected romance, but things get complicated once he's back on U.S. soil.
Sara Ryan needs a change. She loves her niece, Kaylee, but being the girl's nanny for the past three years has made it too easy for her brother and sister-in-law to duck their parenting responsibilities while taking advantage of her time and kindness. Sara's widowed mother depends on her, too, and now that Sara has spent years taking care of her family, they've become dependent and entitled while continually chipping away at her self-esteem. Then, when she hears a radio story about sending letters to troops serving abroad, Maj. Gabriel Randall comes into her life. He responds to her letter with an email, which leads to texts, FaceTime, and a full-blown emotional affair—and finally an airline ticket to Alaska for Sara to spend time with Gabriel at the end of his deployment. But Sara has confided to no one but a cousin about the correspondence, and as the day she’s supposed to leave for Alaska grows closer, she continues to keep her silence, creating confusion and turmoil when events force her to face her choices head-on. James (a new pen name for established author Sydney Landon) takes on a kind of mashup of “Cinderella” and soldier pen-pal fantasy, in a sweet, touching way. It is frustrating how reactive Sara is until the very end—even understanding that that’s supposed to be her growth arc—and how everyone else solves her problems, but the ultimate meshing of two lonely souls through a seemingly fated letter makes for a tender, satisfying love story overall.
An entertaining, affecting romance.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0695-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Jove/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Flamboyantly written, if a little too conventionally peopled and plotted.
A treasure hunt leads a young girl to discover her mother’s darkest secret.
In 1936, 9-year-old Alice has been consigned by her mother, Selina Lennox Carew, to the care of her Lennox grandparents at their ancestral stately home, Blackwood Park. The reason for this custodial arrangement is Selina’s trip to Southeast Asia with Alice’s cold, distant father, Rupert, who needs to visit his ruby mines in Burma. Alice is kept abreast of her parents’ travels through her mother’s letters, delivered by longtime family servant Polly. Alice is also directed, by Polly, to discover clues set by her mother, leading the girl on a treasure hunt that helps lift her out of her depression. Alice’s Blackwood sojourn alternates with chapters set in 1925, when young Selina, age 22, is setting the London tabloids ablaze with her antics as one of a cadre of Bright Young People, devil-may-care upper-class flappers and their escorts. But everything changes when, on a madcap treasure hunt of her own, Selina meets Lawrence Weston, a struggling portrait painter and aspiring photographer. The two are drawn inexorably into an affair. Selina's choice of a passionless marriage to Rupert over life with her soul mate, Lawrence, is the fateful decision on which the novel turns, and her rationalizations will be a little too pat to satisfy most readers. Nor will readers be long baffled by Alice’s hunt—given the 1925 backstory, the solution to the puzzle is obvious almost from the start. But genuine surprises do await, even if they entail punishing Selina, after the manner of post-Code Hollywood melodrama, for her breach of class boundaries, disregard for propriety, and unladylike smoking and drinking. The characters verge on stereotypical although there are no true villains and only the domestics lack flaws, particularly Polly and Mr. Patterson, the gardener who introduces Alice to the redemptive joys of nature. However, Grey’s use of sensory detail, enlivening the most mundane of scenes, redeems this novel, too.
Flamboyantly written, if a little too conventionally peopled and plotted.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-06679-4
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
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