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BLING

Name: BLING
Author: Erica Kennedy
ISBN: 1-4013-5215-4

by Erica Kennedy ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2004

Bling is just plain bland.

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Hip-hop heaven.

That’s where Mimi wants to be, among the gods and goddesses of black music, dating eight-figure niggas and living large. Growing up in Toledo, Ohio, without her Haitian father, who walked out long ago on her Italian-American mother, she knows she’s not entirely black, but she’s sure as hell not white either. Segue to New York, where Lamont Jackson, a hustling music producer thinks Mimi just might be the next big thing. He sets out to improve her image and get her noticed. Posh parties with thugillionaires get her face in the papers, but a pretty face isn’t enough. Lamont’s birthday present to Mimi: new boobs. Other big decisions loom: rhinestones on the fake fingernails or just French tips? Straight bleached-blond extensions or natural curls? Lamont oversees the process, glamming Mimi up big-time, though he insists that she dress like a Catholic schoolgirl after midnight, in short plaid skirt, bobby socks, and saddle shoes, and that she call him Daddy at climactic moments. Mimi, a practical gal, doesn’t mind much. It saves time and gets her what she wants: lots of oral sex. She brags to her girlfriends, who gather regularly for gossipy, backstabbing shriekfests, that “Lamont eats her out with the ferocity of a famine victim presented with a steaming bowl of rice.” But she’s no fool, and it’s clear these raunchy ways and constant couplings might not be a forever kind of love, so Mimi casts wayward looks at reclusive genius Gemini, another producer, who’s holed up in a filthy mansion with his all-male posse. Could Gem be The One? Maybe—if one of his ubiquitous homies could be persuaded to change the sheets. A cast of thousands in ghetto-fabulous attire talk nonstop, drop designer names, and worry ’bout running red lights in they limos, but it don’t add up to much in this dull first novel.

Bling is just plain bland.

Pub Date: July 1, 2004

ISBN: 1-4013-5215-4

Page Count: 528

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.