Green (Tempting Fate, 2014, etc.) spins a dark romance, recalling All About Eve, where intimacy masks betrayal.
The perfect personal assistant can make even the most accomplished wife dispensable.
When Grace, a talented chef and assistant cookbook editor, meets legendary writer Ted Chapman, his notoriously mercurial attitude dissolves. A whirlwind romance leads to a seemingly ideal marriage, but beneath the surface, Ted’s unpredictable rages keep Grace walking on eggshells. Ellen, Ted’s longtime and efficient assistant, can usually keep Ted under control. So when Ellen leaves to care for her mother, Grace is anxious to find a replacement. Luckily, she meets Beth at a glitzy dinner. Fortified with stellar recommendations, Beth is surprisingly available to start immediately. She is, of course, too good to be true and quickly becomes indispensable, arranging Ted’s schedule, editing his work, keeping him out of Grace’s hair and even inspiring a character in his new book. As Beth’s star ascends, Grace’s begins to falter. A charity event she planned months in advance turns into a disaster, and someone—perhaps Grace herself?—may have sabotaged it. Worse, Grace seems fuzzier and more distracted each day, which prompts wild mood swings. She fears following in the footsteps of her mother, whose bipolar disorder tarnished Grace’s childhood, driving her to adopt her friend Catherine’s family as her own. Catherine’s mother, Lydia, taught Grace to cook, and Catherine’s twin brothers—handsome Robert and attentive Patrick—were Grace’s first love interests. Suspense builds and suspicions loom over Beth until Grace discovers a stunning secret, which sends her home to England and to Lydia. Her sanity, career and marriage all about to shatter, Grace seeks shelter and finds unexpected love. Grace must devise a plan to save herself and snare the culprit. A rather uncertain resolution suggests a sequel may be in the works.
Green (Tempting Fate, 2014, etc.) spins a dark romance, recalling All About Eve, where intimacy masks betrayal.Pub Date: Dec. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-04733-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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