An odd, flawed book with no obvious audience.
The second novel from the author of Pretty Little Mistakes (2007).
Jennifer Johnson is 30. She’s single and has a job writing advertising copy for a middling Minneapolis department store. She recently made the existentially significant shift from a size 10 to a size 12. Both her younger sister and her ex are getting married on Valentine’s Day. Jennifer would like to be a real writer. She would like to kick her addiction to Cinnabon. More than anything, she would like to not be single. She’s tried online dating. She’s completely ignored the obvious affection of her sweet, attentive coworker Ted. Romantically speaking, she is utterly out of ideas. Then handsome department-store heir Brad Keller walks into her life. For reasons she cannot comprehend, he asks her out on a date, and she decides to make him her own—even if that means totally redefining who she is and what she wants out of life. Jennifer is self-absorbed to the point of being totally unpleasant and McElhatton has a tendency to lavish incredible detail upon material goods while completely ignoring emotional development—although the emphasis here is on Jennifer’s kitschy décor rather than, say, Chloe jeans or Christian Louboutin pumps. Most of the novel is pretty much indistinguishable from other chick-lit fare. But, by the end, there’s a spectacular—and problematic—shift away from the genre’s conventions. Readers who love chick lit will almost certainly be dismayed, and readers who might appreciate McElhatton’s ruthlessness are unlikely to pick up her book in the first place.
An odd, flawed book with no obvious audience.Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-146136-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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