A fine adventure story that will make readers await the next installment with bated breath.
In Parry’s (Winter’s Bite, 2014, etc.) second book in the Isabella Rockwell trilogy, 16-year-old Isabella continues the search for her father and tangles with a dangerous diamond magnate.
Isabella and Midge, an orphan boy she befriended in the first book, have just arrived after a long ocean journey at the Port of Mombasa in East Africa. Fellow travelers include Livia and Rose, two popular, well-to-do girls whom Isabella envies. Parry fashions a compelling struggle among the trio, highlighted with moments of typical teenage jealousy. Then Isabella receives word that her father, a sergeant in the English army who was presumed dead, has been spotted at the Afghan border—but due to his injuries, he’s unable to identify himself. While still aboard ship, Midge and Isabella meet Col. Remus Stone, the governor of Golconda in India, who drunkenly waves around a large, spectacularly beautiful diamond. He tells them that at the entrance of the Golconda mine sits a statue of a goddess whose “third eye,” a special diamond, was stolen long ago. Stone hopes that it’s the same one he has, as he fervently believes a legend that says that until the diamond is returned, no one can unearth any other gems from the mine. Soon after Isabella leaves the ship, she comes upon an old friend who implores her to deliver a special package to a place far from where her father is rumored to be. To complicate matters further, Isabella and Midge have a falling out, and he opts to travel without her. The heartbroken Isabella soon receives a letter from Stone saying that he’s kidnapped Midge and instructing her to meet them at the mine. Parry’s tale is an adventurous, serpentine journey, rich with poetic, cinematic description (“The docks at the port of Masulipatam were thronged with people….Despite her sadness, to suddenly hear so many people speaking Hindi all around her was lovely, as if some central spring in her, which had been wound tight, could suddenly relax”) and many surprising moments that beg rapid page-turning. She weaves this marvelously complex tale with skill, as all the various subplots mesh perfectly at the book’s end. Isabella is a terrific heroine—daring, industrious, and strong—but her struggles with self-doubt will make her thoroughly relatable for teenage readers.
A fine adventure story that will make readers await the next installment with bated breath.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9573321-3-3
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Neilsen Book
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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