An absorbing read.
When a young woman inherits a ramshackle cottage from her spinster aunt, she’s determined to use the house as her aunt did—to avoid an unhappy marriage.
McQuiston (Diary of an Accidental Wallflower, 2015, etc.) returns with the second book in her Seduction Diaries series. Lucy Westmore is dreading her upcoming season on the London marriage mart. She views the custom as “an archaic process” that sells “young women of good breeding to the highest bidder,” and she wants none of it. So when she receives a mysterious package from her recently deceased aunt, she’s delighted to find the key to her aunt’s cottage inside, along with a note explaining that Lucy is the new owner and a collection of her aunt's diaries. But Thomas, the Marquess of Branston, is already in talks with her father to buy the property without Lucy’s consent. Lucy is determined to find out why Thomas wants it so much, since it’s falling down and located in a remote corner of Cornwall. When she dashes off to Cornwall to investigate, she falls in love with the little town of Lizard Bay—and with Thomas, whom she still can’t bring herself to trust. Meanwhile, ghosts in Thomas’ past mean he can’t tolerate London, which makes a future for the couple nearly impossible. Lucy herself finds the odd little community of Lizard Bay so welcoming that she thinks of never leaving, although her love for her family in London is calling her back. Lucy’s feminist tendencies are refreshing, if somewhat surprising, given the Victorian ideas held by her parents. Thomas is a complicated and likable character, and the book has multiple threads of mystery that are not easily solved by the reader.
An absorbing read.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-233512-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Moyes has mastered the art of likable, not terribly memorable, but far from simple-minded storytelling.
Popular British author Moyes (The Girl You Left Behind, 2013, etc.) offers another warmhearted, off-kilter romance, this one between a financially strapped single mother and a geeky tech millionaire.
Ten years ago, Jess Thomas got pregnant and dropped out of high school to marry Marty. Two years ago, hapless Marty temporarily moved out of their home on the southern coast of England to sort out his life. He never returned. Cleaning houses by day and working in a pub at night, Jess barely earns enough to support her 10-year-old daughter, Tanzie, and her 16-year-old stepson, Nicky, whom she’s been raising since he was 8. Jess worries constantly about sensitive Nicky, a moody goth regularly beaten up by the local bully. Math genius Tanzie presents a different crisis: She’s been offered a generous scholarship to a private school her current teachers say she needs, and Jess can’t come up with the balance. The only hope is winning prize money at a math tournament in Scotland, but how to get there? Meanwhile, one of Jess’ cleaning clients, computer whiz Ed Nicholls, has come to stay in his seaside vacation home to avoid publicity surrounding insider trading charges. He and Jess share an instant mutual dislike, but when he ends up drunk at the pub, Jess makes sure he gets home safely. Partly out of gratitude, but largely to escape pressure from lawyers, his ex-wife and his sister—who’s nagging him to attend his father’s birthday party—Ed offers to drive Jess, her kids and their large dog to Scotland. A road-trip-from-hell romantic comedy ensues, complete with carsickness, bad meals and missed signals. Unsurprisingly, hostility evolves into mutual attraction. But Moyes throws in a few wrenches, like Tanzie’s failure at the competition, Ed’s father’s cancer and the cash Jess has secretly kept since it fell out of Ed’s pocket at the pub that first night.
Moyes has mastered the art of likable, not terribly memorable, but far from simple-minded storytelling.Pub Date: July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-525-42658-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
PROFILES
A satisfying treat, with extra scoops of excitement and romance that make up for certain lapses in credibility.
Once-in-a-lifetime romantic passion and graphically depicted torture sessions are only the two extremes of this lively time-travel romance set in 18th-century Scotland—an imaginative and lighthearted debut by a promising newcomer.
World War II has finally ended and Claire Beauchamp Randall, a British Red Cross nurse, has gone off to Scotland with her historian husband, Frank, to try to resume their married life where it left off six years before. Their diligent attempts to make a baby come to a halt, however, when Claire discovers an ancient stone circle on a nearby hilltop, slips between two mysterious-looking boulders, and is transported willy-nilly to the year 1743. Stumbling down the hillside, disoriented and confused, Claire is discovered by Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall, an evil English officer who happens to be her husband's direct ancestor and physical look-alike. Randall notes Claire's revealing 1940's summer dress, assumes she is a whore, and attempts to rape her, whereupon she is rescued by the fierce MacKenzie clan, who take her to their castle and confine her there. Claire adjusts to her changed circumstances with amazing ease, using her nursing experience to tend to her hosts' illnesses while she impatiently awaits a chance to return to the circle of stones. Before she can get away, circumstances force her into a marriage with James Frazer, a Scottish renegade from English justice and Jonathan Randall's archenemy. Young Jamie's good looks, passion, and virility soon redirect Claire's energies to defending her stalwart new husband against her former mate's evil clone, and the fierce, courageous but historically doomed Scottish clans against the course of destiny itself.
A satisfying treat, with extra scoops of excitement and romance that make up for certain lapses in credibility.Pub Date: July 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-385-30230-4
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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