A compelling love story that doesn’t back away from dark situations.
A journalist and an aid worker fall in love amid the hustle of humanitarian work and world news.
Tyler Ang and Cam Donnelly couldn’t be more different. Cam is a “lifer,” a refugee aid worker who has been in the field for too many years. He’s worked in many corners of the world, doing his best to better the lives of the people in his charge. But when a reporter and his crew show up at his refugee camp in Kenya, he is distracted in a way he can’t let himself be, for multiple reasons. Tyler is an up-and-coming journalist looking for an angle that will make his new company realize he’s better than what they’re using him for. The reporting he does in Kenya is bound to help him rise in the ranks. The two share several chance encounters after Cam relocates stateside, and they decide to pursue something deeper. Unfortunately, they each have their own issues: Cam suffers from severe PTSD from his years in the field, and Tyler has to deal with blatant and unconscious racism from all sides, leading to his own uncertainty regarding where he belongs. While this isn’t a coming-out story, Cam’s PTSD is influenced in part by actions he relates to his being gay. Lin approaches her characters with thoughtful consideration, allowing them to grow and learn with each other’s support. The love story is almost underplayed as both Cam and Tyler get their lives in order, and it works.
A compelling love story that doesn’t back away from dark situations.Pub Date: June 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62649-788-7
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Riptide
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
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
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
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