The hero-heroine couple ignites an absorbing plot, with an ending that promises more to come.
An immortal man meets a woman with more than a passing resemblance to the love he lost a century and a half ago in Printy’s fantasy-romance debut.
Jack Hammond may be 170 years old, but bartenders still card him. With the perpetual appearance of someone college-age, Jack maintains a low profile by periodically relocating. His latest retreat is Portland, Maine, where he gets a job at a bookstore specializing in antique books. But Jack’s quiet life is disturbed when he has a run-in with coffee-shop employee and student Leah Winters. Leah’s a dead ringer for Lydia, his fiancee who died back in the mid-19th century but whom Jack still misses dearly. Jack isn’t the only one fascinated; as it turns out, he may be the man whom Lydia’s (literally) dreamt about for a number of years. At the same time, Jack’s repeatedly seeing another immortal, Artagan, who apparently remembers him. Artagan tells Jack of a council of immortals with close ties to Death who “orchestrate” deaths of mortals. Jack’s newfound love for Leah, meanwhile, may have a snag, because there’s no possibility of the two growing old together. But a menace lurks: immortal Vita is gunning for Jack and his family line. Having just learned that there is indeed a way for someone to kill an immortal, Jack knows that both he and Leah are in danger. The novel focuses on the romance and doesn’t bog down the plot with details of Jack’s long life. There are welcome flashbacks to his youth and family, but Jack’s first-person narrative doesn’t expound on his immortality—even he doesn’t understand it. He’s definitely not a vampire, and gradual revelations from Artagan, including Leah’s dreams, make for riveting turns. Despite the protagonists-in-peril thread, the book shines brightest as a romance, and Printy’s luscious descriptions are on point. “The salty scent,” during Jack and Leah’s walk, “mixes with the sweet fragrance of the deep-pink sea roses that border the path.” The story’s missing a bit of nuance, especially details about old-fashioned Jack coping with the contemporary world; he’s got an iPod, but his playlist disappointingly remains a mystery.
The hero-heroine couple ignites an absorbing plot, with an ending that promises more to come.Pub Date: March 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-940215-25-9
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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