A debut novel delivers a romance set in the rarefied world of pop-music superstardom.
Kalynn Stearne is a newly minted superstar on the verge of her first big solo tour. She has two platinum albums, industry awards, and a huge fan base. But she also has serious problems. An experience with abuse in her past keeps her from sleeping. She feels smothered by her fame, having to be accompanied by bodyguards wherever she goes. She doesn’t get to do the normal things a 19-year-old does, and everybody wants something from her. It’s hard for her to trust men when every guy she meets, including other pop stars and even her tour director, treats her like a sexual trophy. That’s why her immediate attraction to Layne Kennett, her new tour photographer, is so unusual. Layne has his own troubles—he is on probation and has been given this assignment from his father’s media company as a last chance to go straight. Just to stir the pot, Kalynn has a stalker named Alexa/Alex sending her threatening notes. When Kalynn’s longtime manager, Mae, is found dead, the stalker takes credit for it. Now Kalynn has to work through her trust issues, worry about a creep getting to her and her adopted family, and mount the most important tour of her life. Layne has to keep Kalynn’s trust and still reveal his past as a felon. That’s a lot of stuff working against a happy ending, but this is a romance novel, after all, and a briskly moving one at that. Fairbairn doesn’t break any new ground with this tale, but it does have plenty to offer. The characters, especially Kalynn and Layne, are well-drawn and believable. Their development feels natural, even in extraordinary circumstances. There are plot points, for example, a party in Malibu when Layne sees a pop star hitting on Kalynn, in which the author avoids obvious choices and allows his characters to be more human than caricatures. And his prose is sparkling clean, with never a muddled moment.
An engaging, tightly written love story with a dash of suspense.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-79049-531-3
Page Count: 428
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
Categories: GENERAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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