Topical family melodrama.
Married Bay Area woman tries to overcome a fraught relationship with her troubled teenage stepdaughter.
Mr. Right can come with big-time baggage, and that is certainly the case for interior designer Andi. Already in her late 30s when she meets and falls for divorced dad Ethan, Andi wants nothing more than to start a family of her own with him. A doting father to his two young daughters, Sophia and Emily, Ethan shares custody of them with his ex-wife Janice, a bitter, unreliable alcoholic. Sophia, ten year’s old when the story begins, adores her cool new stepmom, but 17-year-old goth princess Emily is a different story. A master of manipulation and histrionics, Emily sees Andi as a major threat in a battle for Ethan’s love. She manages to twist her overly permissive dad around her little finger—to Andi’s dismay—and acts out by experimenting with drugs and sex. Struggling with fertility issues, Andi is secretly thrilled, though, when Emily is revealed to be 7 months pregnant from one of her random hookups. Hoping that Emily will give the child to her and Ethan, she is then crushed when Ethan insists Emily give it up for adoption. Emily has other plans, of course, and gives birth to a healthy boy, Callum. But motherhood turns out to be more than she can handle, and she runs off to Portland. Andi is left to raise Cal as her own for three happy years, knowing in the back of her mind that Emily might someday return. Away from home, Emily gets a job on an organic farm and manages to clean up her act. She also repairs her relationship with Janice, who has stopped drinking, and reconnects with her childhood pal Michael, who has grown into quite a hunk. The two of them decide to move back to Mill Valley, with Emily insisting to an ecstatic Ethan and a skeptical Andi that she only wants to be a part of Cal’s life. But does she mean it, and has she really changed? Green (Promises to Keep, 2010, etc.) ramps up the emotional stakes by presenting both Andi and Emily’s points of view, even as her prose is a bit on the dull and repetitive side.
Topical family melodrama.Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-59182-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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