An admirable but too-squeaky-clean protagonist in a story that capably manages its contentious subject matter.
In first-time novelist McBride’s dramatic thriller, a successful businessman is shocked when his troubled teenage son accuses him of molestation.
Shane Connelly has made something of himself, a young hooligan–turned–college graduate now launching his own high-tech firm, Parallax Café Technology. His home life, however, is a different story. Both his wife, Tara, and teenage son, Nick, have mental problems, exacerbated by Tara’s heavy drinking and Nick’s frequent drug use. Shane, fed up with Nick’s late-night partying and family cars mysteriously vanishing only to turn up again, finally kicks him out of the house. That same day, Tara files a restraining order against Shane; Nick, it seems, has alleged that Shane’s been molesting him. Shane has believers in daughters Jaclyn and Caitlyn Joyce and his sister Katie, but he faces an uphill battle, struggling with the charges and confusion over why his son would accuse him of such things. The novel sometimes terrifies, showing how a simple allegation can make a person appear guilty. One of the cops who interrogates Shane, for instance, threatens him, while most people, even those supporting Shane, warn him that he’ll almost certainly be killed in prison. McBride ably develops sympathy for his protagonist, perhaps a little too well. Anticipation gradually diminishes as the case against Shane becomes increasingly rickety, especially with schizophrenic paranoid Tara as the only person who fully believes Nick’s claim. The story gives Shane a chance at romance with Lia, a woman he meets just before his troubles begin. He falls in love a little too fast—“Could she be the one?” he thinks, before Lia’s even talked about herself—but scenes with the two, as well as Jaclyn and CJ, are welcome reprieves from Shane’s tirelessly proclaiming his innocence. The story takes place in 2001, beginning months before 9/11, but McBride doesn’t allow the tragedy to be a mere backdrop. Shane and Lia’s helping others at ground zero, in fact, solidifies their relationship. The ending is predictable but absolutely satisfying, and Shane even earns a surprising, unlikely ally along the way.
An admirable but too-squeaky-clean protagonist in a story that capably manages its contentious subject matter.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-1483421971
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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