An often pleasing combination of romance and suspense.
A principled young journalist in the early 1990s tackles the case of her career in Lew’s debut novel.
Newspaper reporter Ariella Richardson meets the handsome, formidable Dr. Sam Becker when she interviews him about his breakthrough research on cervical cancer. Becker has a severe dislike of the media, but Ariella’s honesty, intelligence, and beauty breaks through his reserve. Ariella wants to specialize in women’s health stories and she covets the role of lead reporter on the health beat for the Boston Times. Thanks to her connection with Sam, she finds herself on the trail of two big stories involving the tobacco industry’s funding of cancer research and the horrifying murder of a pregnant woman. An interview with one of Sam’s test subjects leads Ariella to the realization that the murder suspect currently in police custody is likely innocent of the crime—and another doctor involved in Sam’s research may hold the key to finding the real killer. Sam struggles with Ariella’s willingness to place herself in harm’s way, and Ariella must decide whether she’s willing to sacrifice her personal life for her career. Lew’s novel offers a snapshot of several diverse Boston neighborhoods of the 1990s, but she also touches on social issues that are still in the news today, including women’s health, racial bias in law enforcement, and potentially explosive socioeconomic and racial tensions in society. She also highlights how some issues were still debatable in that era, such as whether the human papilloma virus has a connection to cervical cancer. Lew manages to tie several different narrative threads together while keeping the focus on Ariella and her relationship with Sam. Ariella is a spunky character who retains her independence despite Sam’s tendency toward control. Her naïveté, his temperament, and the power dynamic in their relationship smack of a Fifty Shades of Grey-like scenario. That said, Lew resists the urge to let Sam run the show, keeping Ariella at the center of the story.
An often pleasing combination of romance and suspense.Pub Date: May 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9973533-1-0
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Tortoise Shell Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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