Carefully crafted debut has a few funny lines, but the condescending tone grates.
Film student meets love interest.
Charlotte Frost has a mental habit of chronicling her life in screenplay format—but no one would pay money to see the movie, since her life is really, really boring. Okay, so she’s in the graduate film program at Columbia and the protégée of the famous Horton Lear, who thinks the world of her. But so what? Horton honestly doesn’t like her latest opus, Honey and Helen, which has to do with a lesbian love triangle involving a paraplegic, a nurse, and someone else. But it’s character-driven, Charlie whines, knowing that her chances of winning a prestigious film fellowship are slim. Off she stomps to teach yoga on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where she corrects the downward-dog pose of an utterly gorgeous guy. How is she, the overly cerebral child of an English professor, supposed to know that Hank Destin is a soap opera star? Depressed after a date with a doorman who saves her from a mugging, she goes out with Hank anyway, who has darling dimples and muscular buns—and he’s heterosexual. Even though he, a native of New Jersey, seems to be a teeny bit lacking in the intellectual pretensions Charlie loves to flaunt—the wry literary allusions, the intuitive grasp of cryptic visual symbolism in obscure Russian films, the endless references to classic movies that have much better dialogue than this book has—Hank does send flowers and matzo balls from the Second Avenue Deli when she comes down with a cold. Charlie’s astonished to see herself on the Post’s Page Six, especially since Hank’s last flame, a gorgeous redheaded actress, is also mentioned. He can’t be serious. Wonder of wonders, though, Hank agrees to star in her shoestring-budget remake of Madame Bovary. Will it prove a hit at the Toronto Film Festival? Is his love real?
Carefully crafted debut has a few funny lines, but the condescending tone grates.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-059568-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable...
An unlucky woman finally gets lucky in love on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii.
From getting her hand stuck in a claw machine at age 6 to losing her job, Olive Torres has never felt that luck was on her side. But her fortune changes when she scores a free vacation after her identical twin sister and new brother-in-law get food poisoning at their wedding buffet and are too sick to go on their honeymoon. The only catch is that she’ll have to share the honeymoon suite with her least favorite person—Ethan Thomas, the brother of the groom. To make matters worse, Olive’s new boss and Ethan’s ex-girlfriend show up in Hawaii, forcing them both to pretend to be newlyweds so they don’t blow their cover, as their all-inclusive vacation package is nontransferable and in her sister’s name. Plus, Ethan really wants to save face in front of his ex. The story is told almost exclusively from Olive’s point of view, filtering all communication through her cynical lens until Ethan can win her over (and finally have his say in the epilogue). To get to the happily-ever-after, Ethan doesn’t have to prove to Olive that he can be a better man, only that he was never the jerk she thought he was—for instance, when she thought he was judging her for eating cheese curds, maybe he was actually thinking of asking her out. Blending witty banter with healthy adult communication, the fake newlyweds have real chemistry as they talk it out over snorkeling trips, couples massages, and a few too many tropical drinks to get to the truth—that they’re crazy about each other.
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable as well as free.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2803-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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