A tragic pretext allows relationships to blossom in James’s sometimes laborious novel.
With the sudden death of her sibling, a woman pitches in to take care of two orphaned children in this cozy, overstuffed domestic drama by English novelist James (Paradise House, not reviewed).
Felicity née Swift and her husband are killed in a car accident, leaving their two children, Carrie, 9, and Joel, 4, in the care of Felicity’s adored single sister, Harriet. A computer programmer in Oxford, Harriet has to quit her job and sacrifice her new boyfriend in order to move back home to Cheshire with her parents to care for the kids entrusted to her. It’s rough going at first, as the children are traumatized and often act out, and the grandparents, Bob and Eileen, are elderly and have issues of their own—Bob, a former salesman, enters into an affair to assuage his grief at the death of his beloved Felicity. Moreover, Harriet doesn’t really like children, and simply wants to get another job and house nearby. While probing her sister’s computer messages, Harriet finds that Felicity was involved in a hot affair with a man not her husband. In parallel complications, Will Hart moves across the street from Harriet in Cheshire, trying to put his life back on track after years of being divorced from the punishing Maxine, while maintaining sturdy relationships with his teenaged daughters, Gemma and Suzie. He becomes Harriet’s love interest, though there are others, and Will has to convince the much-younger Harriet that he is a worthy candidate by undergoing enormous grief of his own, first with Suzie’s pregnancy and abortion, then after her bizarre brain hemorrhage and death. Harriet explores transformed friendships with longtime neighbor brothers Miles and Dominic, the latter a Cambridge aesthete who loved Felicity dearly. The story tracks Harriet’s progress, both professional and emotional, as she finds a new job and new boyfriend, and in the end makes peace with the status quo.
A tragic pretext allows relationships to blossom in James’s sometimes laborious novel.Pub Date: April 15, 2006
ISBN: 0-75286-545-5
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Orion/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable...
An unlucky woman finally gets lucky in love on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii.
From getting her hand stuck in a claw machine at age 6 to losing her job, Olive Torres has never felt that luck was on her side. But her fortune changes when she scores a free vacation after her identical twin sister and new brother-in-law get food poisoning at their wedding buffet and are too sick to go on their honeymoon. The only catch is that she’ll have to share the honeymoon suite with her least favorite person—Ethan Thomas, the brother of the groom. To make matters worse, Olive’s new boss and Ethan’s ex-girlfriend show up in Hawaii, forcing them both to pretend to be newlyweds so they don’t blow their cover, as their all-inclusive vacation package is nontransferable and in her sister’s name. Plus, Ethan really wants to save face in front of his ex. The story is told almost exclusively from Olive’s point of view, filtering all communication through her cynical lens until Ethan can win her over (and finally have his say in the epilogue). To get to the happily-ever-after, Ethan doesn’t have to prove to Olive that he can be a better man, only that he was never the jerk she thought he was—for instance, when she thought he was judging her for eating cheese curds, maybe he was actually thinking of asking her out. Blending witty banter with healthy adult communication, the fake newlyweds have real chemistry as they talk it out over snorkeling trips, couples massages, and a few too many tropical drinks to get to the truth—that they’re crazy about each other.
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable as well as free.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2803-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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