Whether the reader finds the novel’s tone snarky or witty, Jean tends to self-described “incessant, unbridled thinking” that...
From Niederhoffer (The Romantics, 2008, etc.), the romantic escapades and indecision of an independent film producer who feels alienated from her husband and trapped by domesticity.
Native New Yorker Jean met Sam, a budding filmmaker from Ohio new to New York City, when they were in their mid-20s and full of bohemian energy and artistic ambition. Now, they are married with two kids, living in a Brooklyn brownstone they can’t afford to renovate, their marriage as stalled as the economy. While Jean’s career as a producer means finding financing for Sam’s latest film, she hates asking people for money; an independent filmmaker herself, Niederhoffer gives a behind-the-scenes look at the business with an insider’s satiric disaffection. While Jean loves her children, she’s not enthralled with the drudgery of motherhood either. As for Sam, he’s a nice guy, but the chemistry has evaporated. Jean escapes reality by writing daily—never-actually-sent emails to her college (Harvard, natch) boyfriend, Doug. Then one day, she actually sends an email asking him to meet for a drink, and he says yes. The rendezvous does not go well. Soon afterward, she travels to Los Angeles to convince a wavering actor to stay committed to Sam’s film. At the hotel bar, she flirts with a man named Benjamin, who leaves without paying for his drink until the maitre d’ calls him (using the phone number Benjamin gave Jean). Jean suspects he’s conned her, but he claims he was merely flustered by her charm. Back in Brooklyn, she obsessively researches Benjamin on the Internet, creating scenarios of him in her head until the real Benjamin slowly reveals himself. Meanwhile, Sam finds the stash of Jean’s unsent emails to Doug, assumes they are carrying on an affair and reacts accordingly. By the time the movie begins shooting, Jean must decide where her rather brittle heart belongs.
Whether the reader finds the novel’s tone snarky or witty, Jean tends to self-described “incessant, unbridled thinking” that remains shallow and becomes tedious long before she chooses her man.Pub Date: July 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-312-64373-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
Three bridegrooms for three sisters: Roberts (True Betrayals, 1995, etc.) stylishly moseys into Big Sky romance. Jack Mercy was a mean son of a bitch when he was alive, and as a corpse, buried with his Stetson and his bullwhip, he's not much better. According to his will, his three daughters, who've never met and whom Jack had by three different wives, must live together for a year at his big Montana ranch house in order to win their inheritance. During the long winter, the women bicker and bond and get entangled with three sexy, strapping fellows. Roberts has always been a winner at sexual tension and sexy dialogue, and so the reader gets to see not one but three couples get past the preliminaries and into the sack. The youngest sister, cowgirl Willa, manager of the Mercy ranch and daughter of an Ute mother, matches wits and strong wills with Ben McKinnon, lusty part owner of the Three Rocks spread. Lily, from Virginia, is a delicate, bird-boned creature who's been battered by her husband, but is now taken under the wing of Adam Wolfchild, Willa's Indian half-brother. And, finally, Tess, a sharp-dressing, wisecracking screenwriter from Hollywood who couldn't wait to get back to Rodeo Drive, stays to marry Nate, a frontier lawyer who raises horses, graduated from Yale, and loves Keats. Providing the usual Roberts suspense is a serial killer who guts and scalps his victims—not only humans but (in the newest romance-novel manifestation of evil) calves, cats, skunks and deer. (Why would anyone do that to Bambi's mom? wails Tess.) Roberts also includes a genuine, successful red herring, virgin territory for most romance writers, and incorporates all the important rituals of the genre with her customary skill and humor. A good read on a long winter's night.
Pub Date: March 12, 1996
ISBN: 0-399-14122-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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