This enjoyable romance will appeal to readers who like down-home, midlife romance stories with relatable characters and...
Cooper (Truths and Roses, 2012, etc.) finds that pleasant middle ground between lowbrow Harlequin schmaltz and highbrow neurotic love.
After wealthy New York City stockbroker Ian McKinley has to bail his son Luke out of jail for pot possession, he moves his family to the small town of Keeling Creek, Va. While the setup feels a bit rushed (Luke dramatically tells his dad he feels responsible for his mother’s death—she died after having him—within the first few pages), Cooper quickly finds her footing as she transitions the story south to town vet Colby Williams. Colby was forced to raise her daughter Lena on her own after Colby’s college boyfriend, Doug, bailed. A strong woman who put herself through college pregnant and owns her own vet practice, Colby is subject to everyone’s meddling. While it seems half the town is always trying to set her up on dates (especially best friend Phoebe), she’s content to be single. That is, until hunky Ian shows up in her office. And despite the fact that every woman in Keeling Creek wants a piece of Ian (who happens to be engaged to a woman back in New York), he eventually, through a series of somewhat unrealistic but fun hijinks, gets to know Colby. A few dynamic subplots are smartly interwoven as Lena starts to fall for Luke at school and leans on him as she finds out her mother lied to her about the whereabouts of her MIA father. So while the book may have started off a bit rocky, the conclusion is brought together nicely, tying things up with subtle life lessons.
This enjoyable romance will appeal to readers who like down-home, midlife romance stories with relatable characters and animal sidekicks.Pub Date: June 9, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 247
Publisher: Fence Free Entertainment, LLC
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A Western on the business side of things, deftly supported by engrossing melodrama and inimitable characters.
A rancher looks into his late father’s past and may learn more than he’d intended in Ochs’ Western drama (The Boathouse, 2008).
Oliver Walsh, despite being the only son and the oldest of three children, receives the smallest chunk of his father’s vast inheritance. But what he finds most jarring is the inclusion of a weathered rifle that his father had deemed valuable and an apparently abandoned ranch of which Oliver was not even aware. A little research finds a connection between the two—both were formerly owned by Malcolm Duffey Jr. Years before, Malcolm had moved west to Montana, where he made money hunting buffalo before going into business with a man that he didn’t completely trust—C. Charles Walsh. Ochs takes a unique approach to telling his story. Though scenes with Malcolm are flashbacks and form the bulk of the novel, they’re not the narrative interpretation of what Oliver has learned through researching land records and newspaper articles. What he ultimately exposes is a significant but condensed version. The dual timelines maintain a high level of anticipation. The prior knowledge of Malcolm’s death (much earlier than Charles’) and the crumbling of the two men’s personal and business relations fuels curiosity about the story leading up to those events. There’s little humor, but Malcolm’s education of the West by way of dime-store novels is a highlight, especially with titles such as Jesse James and the Soiled Dames and Buffalo Bill Plays the Death Flute. The hardships of the Old West are shown with an unblinking eye, which may cause animal lovers to flinch—buffalo, horses and cattle fall prey to hunting, severe weather and harsh conditions.
A Western on the business side of things, deftly supported by engrossing melodrama and inimitable characters.Pub Date: April 29, 2012
ISBN: 978-1463592806
Page Count: 192
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A provoking, entertaining glimpse inside the still-coalescing mind of a smart young woman.
De Shadley’s compilation of blog posts written while she attended college.
De Shadley is not the author’s real name, but is, as she describes it, her “nom de blog,” and the book’s title is taken from one of her blog’s musings. Rinth is a young woman on the verge of graduating from a top-tier women’s college. Reading her blog, one gets the impression of an intelligent, dedicated scholar, anxious to test-drive her newly gained knowledge. In the guise of her alter ego, the author is able to bare herself both figuratively and, as the title suggests, literally. Rinth has no qualms about voicing her every opinion. In one section she confesses to being given a post-hypnotic suggestion while watching a YouTube video. Preparing for a visit home, Rinth hopes her mother will not notice her new “tramp stamp.” With each entry, Rinth ponders some new idea and grounds her opinions with research. However, at times her youth and naiveté color her otherwise sound judgment. The author has far more faith in positive outcomes than a more seasoned observer might, as some of her political commentary indicates. Rinth truly believes herself to be open-minded, but constant references to the tenets of her Catholic faith inevitably cloud the picture. Nevertheless, it’s obvious the author is expressing herself honestly. Her chapter on eating healthily at McDonald’s will put naysayers of the Golden Arches to shame. An entry on what she would and wouldn’t do for money is both informative and funny. Rinth reveals a good deal about who she really is. Like a tale from Aesop, all of the essays have a moral, delivered with charismatic tongue-in-cheek humor.
A provoking, entertaining glimpse inside the still-coalescing mind of a smart young woman.Pub Date: June 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-1470123598
Page Count: 228
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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