Our heroine’s dangerous romance with the “wrong man” is engaging enough, though Porter’s examination of domestic abuse is...
The second in Porter’s Brennan Sisters trilogy focuses on Kit: single, almost 40 and wondering when it will be her turn to have it all.
In the large Brennan clan of San Francisco firefighters, police officers and nurses, Kit, an English teacher at a Catholic school, is the designated good girl. She is the peacemaker, the caretaker and the occasional doormat. Having just ended a long relationship that didn’t include marriage, children or passion, Kit is thinking about adopting a child. This news sits poorly with her conservative friends and family, who want her to do it the old-fashioned way. She would too, but the men out there! First, there is Michael Dempsey, handsome and clean-cut, but their first date is disastrous. He is controlling and crude and then lets drop he’s actually married. Then there is Jude Knight, a mystery man she met while at her family’s Capitola beach house. He has the look of a romance-novel hero (long hair, taut muscles, cheekbones that betray his Native American heritage) but the tattoos and motorcycle of a bad boy, and Kit could never bring him home to her family. A week after their date, Michael Dempsey appears in Kit’s class; he has reconciled with his wife, and his stepdaughter Delilah is now enrolled at the school. Although Kit imagines Delilah’s life is strained (on their date, Michael confessed to hating his mouthy stepdaughter), she has no idea the extent of the abuse; but Jude Knight does: He’s Delilah’s next-door neighbor, and he gets a nightly earful of the fights, screams and punches. When Delilah gets in trouble at school, she calls Jude, and he and Kit reconnect. Will Delilah get away from her abusive stepfather? Will Jude win Kit over? Is naming the romantic hero Knight going a bit too far?
Our heroine’s dangerous romance with the “wrong man” is engaging enough, though Porter’s examination of domestic abuse is too lightly handled.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-425-25342-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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