A classic wacky rom-com and an ideal summer read.
An Instagram mishap leads to a fake engagement announcement for a struggling jeweler…and when sales spike, she decides to play along.
Eliza Roth spent her childhood dreaming of owning a store, and with her sister, Sophie, she's able to make her dream come alive in the form of Brooklyn Jewels. When Eliza finds out via Instagram that her no-good ex is engaged, she indulges in one of her favorite ways to take out her frustration—creating fake engagement announcements for herself, using the beautiful rings she sells in the store, complete with cheesy, gag-inducing captions. But when Eliza wakes up to a flurry of Instagram activity, she realizes that she accidentally posted her fake announcement, including an eye-roll–worthy caption: “They say when you know, you know…and I know I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” Eliza and Sophie are both mortified, but the two of them quickly see that all this online attention is bringing in major sales. And with an upcoming rent hike that means they might not be able to stay in their current building, plus Sophie and her wife’s expensive fertility treatments, they need the money. When a wedding venue reaches out to offer their facility to Eliza free of charge, she pounces on it. All the publicity from a highly Instagrammable wedding will surely bring in the money they need. The only problem? There’s no groom. She sets off to find a fake fiance in a bar and ends up stumbling upon Blake, a fellow jeweler who seems picture perfect. When they start dating, Eliza doesn’t tell him about her plan…and as they grow closer, she thinks it’s too late to come clean. But when Eliza starts to develop a real connection to her bartender friend, Raj, things get a lot more complicated. While some aspects of the story strain credulity (Blake frequently says he isn’t on Instagram, but it seems unlikely that he or one of his friends wouldn’t encounter some of the online press about Eliza’s “engagement”), the story is so fun and fast paced that it hardly matters. Orenstein’s (Playing With Matches, 2018) writing is quick, witty, and compulsively readable even when Eliza’s desperate actions evoke cringes. Although the story is over the top, the feelings are real, and readers will be able to relate to Eliza’s struggle to find her soul mate in the age of apps and social media.
A classic wacky rom-com and an ideal summer read.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9821-1779-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hannah, after eight paperbacks, abandons her successful time-travelers for a hardcover life of kitchen-sink romance. Everyone must have got the Olympic Peninsula memo for this spring because, as of this reading, authors Hannah, Nora Roberts, and JoAnn Ross have all placed their newest romances in or near the Quinault rain forest. Here, 40ish Annie Colwater, returns to Washington State after her husband, high-powered Los Angeles lawyer Blake, tells her he’s found another (younger) woman and wants a divorce. Although a Stanford graduate, Annie has known only a life of perfect wifedom: matching Blake’s ties to his suits and cooking meals from Gourmet magazine. What is she to do with her shattered life? Well, she returns to dad’s house in the small town of Mystic, cuts off all her hair (for a different look), and goes to work as a nanny for lawman Nick Delacroix, whose wife has committed suicide, whose young daughter Izzy refuses to speak, and who himself has descended into despair and alcoholism. Annie spruces up Nick’s home on Mystic Lake and sends “Izzy-bear” back into speech mode. And, after Nick begins attending AA meetings, she and he become lovers. Still, when Annie learns that she’s pregnant not with Nick’s but with Blake’s child, she heads back to her empty life in the Malibu Colony. The baby arrives prematurely, and mean-spirited Blake doesn’t even stick around to support his wife. At this point, it’s perfectly clear to Annie—and the reader—that she’s justified in taking her newborn daughter and driving back north. Hannah’s characters indulge in so many stages of the weeps, from glassy eyes to flat-out sobs, that tear ducts are almost bound to stay dry. (First printing of 100,000; first serial to Good Housekeeping; Literary Guild/Doubleday book club selections)
Pub Date: March 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-609-60249-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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