An ideal, frothy beach book.
Debut author Lea presents a quaint snapshot of small-town life and explores the bonds of friendship and love in her novel.
Sara’s life has fallen apart. Following her divorce and recent job loss, she is out of options and low on cash. In a last-ditch effort to pull her life together, Sara packs up her teenage daughter, Ginny, and moves back to her childhood home—the charming seaside town of Destinybay. But things have changed in Sara’s absence; the once-bustling downtown is now home to several vacant storefronts and a plethora of available parking spaces. Her best friends, Alex and Diana, have family problems of their own. The only constant is Sara’s mother, whose distant, disapproving attitude hasn’t changed since Sara fled home years ago. Given the title of the book, it’s no surprise when destiny knocks and things begin looking up. Sara reconnects with friends and establishes a tentative truce with her mother. Robert, a kindly family friend and businessman, takes on the role of fairy godmother when he offers to finance the reopening of a defunct coffee shop. The cafe brings challenges, new friends and professional fulfillment for Sara, as it becomes the locus of a downtown revitalization. Yet Sara finds herself distracted by her former childhood sweetheart, Sam, who makes it clear he’s never gotten over her. Lea presents a lively cast, tossing in enough pop-culture references to make Lorelai Gilmore proud. Sam and Sara’s relationship is central here, but the lasting friendship of Lea’s female protagonists is also a significant, intriguing facet of her novel. The author ably follows several storylines, including the inner workings of Alex’s and Diana’s lives. Lea paints a homey, if clichéd, picture of small-town life. Her descriptions of harvest festivals, town parades, summer camps and eccentric personalities drop the reader right in the middle of the archetypal town square.
An ideal, frothy beach book.Pub Date: April 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1480805149
Page Count: 394
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
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.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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