A fun, sexy, romantic mystery and a great series launch.
A woman seeking refuge on a remote island inadvertently becomes an alibi for her sexy, grumpy handyman, who's being framed for murder.
Whitaker Island, “the perfect place to disappear,” promises sanctuary for Tessa Jenkins, but she didn’t expect to meet someone like Hansen Rye, the hot island handyman who can fix anything but isn’t much of a people person, ignoring all the women who flirt with him. When Tessa asks him to help her investigate a seemingly abandoned boat, they see a mysterious man walking out of the sea dressed in a suit. The man disappears into the woods, and neither Hansen nor his best friend, Ben, the island cop, can find any trace of him. When Hansen stops at Tessa’s house to give her an update, he finds her terrified, since a fierce storm is raging and someone just tried to break in. He stays the night to make sure she’s safe, allowing them each to hint at their mutual crush and offering Hansen an alibi when the man is found outside Tessa’s home the next morning, murdered. Hansen, who hadn’t seen the man’s face on the beach, now recognizes him as the person responsible for a tragedy in his family, someone he’d threatened in the past. Tessa stands by Hansen, and together they and Ben try to solve the crime, which ultimately makes them targets of a variety of enemies. Dimon demonstrates her romantic suspense chops, setting her new series on an island full of residents who are part secret keepers, part gossipmongers. Tessa and Hansen’s shared attraction, respect, and trust drive their inevitable happy-ever-after, and we are entertained and intrigued by the journey.
A fun, sexy, romantic mystery and a great series launch.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-289278-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Brilliant.
Combining an unerring instinct for telling detail with the broader brushstrokes you need to tackle issues of culture and politics, Patchett (The Magician’s Assistant, 1997, etc.) creates a remarkably compelling chronicle of a multinational group of the rich and powerful held hostage for months.
An unnamed impoverished South American country hopes to woo business from a rich Japanese industrialist, Mr. Hosokawa, by hosting a birthday party at which his favorite opera singer, Roxane Coss, entertains. Because the president refuses to miss his soap opera, the vice-president hosts the party. An invading band of terrorists, who planned to kidnap the president, find themselves instead with dozens of hostages on their hands. They free the less important men and all the women except Roxane. As the remaining hostages and their captors settle in, Gen, Mr. Hosokawa’s multilingual translator, becomes the group’s communication link, Roxane and her music its unifying heart. Patchett weaves individual histories of the hostages and the not-so-terrifying terrorists within a tapestry of their present life together. The most minor character breathes with life. Each page is dense with incident, the smallest details magnified by the drama of the situation and by the intensity confinement always creates. The outside world recedes as time seems to stop; the boundaries between captive and captor blur. In pellucid prose, Patchett grapples with issues of complexity and moral ambiguity that arise as confinement becomes not only a way of life but also for some, both hostage and hostage-taker, a life preferable to their previous existence. Readers may intellectually reject the author’s willingness to embrace the terrorists’ humanity, but only the hardest heart will not succumb. Conventional romantic love also flowers, between Gen and Carmen, a beguilingly innocent terrorist, between Mr. Hosokawa and Roxane. Even more compelling are the protective, almost familial affections that arise, the small acts of kindness in what is, inevitably, a tragedy.
Brilliant.Pub Date: June 2, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-018873-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
A scheming rival and an obsessive fan convince a TV star that she's a long way from Kansas—in more sudsy romantic suspense from Roberts (Honest Illusions, 1992). Deanna Reynolds and Angela Perkins are both smart, talented, attractive, and ambitious. The big difference between the two talk- show hosts is that Angela is an attention-hungry woman desperate to maintain her fading charms and worshipful audience at all costs, while Dee maintains her Midwestern values even as her Chicago-based show makes her a star and threatens Angela's in New York. Angela, who was once Dee's mentor, has never forgiven the younger woman for turning down her offer to come to New York with her. Even less forgivable is Dee's romance with Finn Riley, a footloose foreign correspondent and once Angela's lover. Finn, who coolly calls in exclusives from a crash-landing 747, shrugs off a bullet wound while he broadcasts live during a shootout, and indisputably earns the nickname "Desert Hunk" during the Gulf War, finds his match in the unbelievably beautiful, desirable, and sweet Deanna. While the two make seismic love on any available surface and Angela plots Dee's downfall in the ratings, a secret admirer (whose identity is more obvious than the author must have intended) writes her love notes. Then, one by one, he begins to kill off all the people who have hurt or betrayed her—and attempts to realize his insane dream of making Deanna entirely his own. A sexy hero whose no-nonsense presence cuts through the vapors and cattiness of the womenfolk and a convincing behind-the-scenes look at TV—both help make up for the weak humor, implausible plot, and trite glitz of this predictable novel.
Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0425190382
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1993
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