A romance chock full of unexpected twists, turns, secrets, and spirits plus a healthy dose of redemptive love.
Soon after an African-American woman in Blink, Texas, buys a haunted house that was the scene of a murder 30 years ago, the handsome son of the victim shows up. Wildly attracted to each other, the two also sense that they’re instrumental to resolution for the restless ghosts.
Abby Rhodes loves the house she just bought and has loved it for years. She felt “like she’d belonged in it, and every time she’d walked away from it, she’d missed it.” A contractor, she plans to renovate but realizes there’s something weird going on. Her psychic friend, Marlowe, confirms that the house has spirits but says they like Abby. Then a stranger stops by, and the ghosts welcome him, too. The man is Jordan Tunson, adopted son and heir of Julian Gatewood, a “black man with balls big enough to jump into a white man’s game” and a murder victim in the house three decades earlier. Jordan has already grown Julian’s company immensely and is working on an astronomical opportunity. Not a good time to be drawn to the new owner or the secrets of the house where his father was murdered, but Jordan feels compelled. As Abby and Jordan fall in love and sort out how to help the agitated ghosts by digging into the past, Jordan's recent ex-lover, Robin, isn’t ready to give him up and will go to astounding lengths to keep him. Mason sets up a fascinating, multilayered storyline with a lot of moving parts that she keeps generally smooth, well-oiled, and nicely paced, though the end feels a bit rushed. Robin is slightly unhinged, and readers might ask the same questions she should—and Jordan does—about whether anyone should want a man so desperately when he doesn’t want you.
A romance chock full of unexpected twists, turns, secrets, and spirits plus a healthy dose of redemptive love.Pub Date: July 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-05226-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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