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
A delightfully sweet, funny, and heartbreaking ode to love stories, both onscreen and off-.
A movie-obsessed projectionist looks back at his relationship and wonders where it all went wrong in this debut from Nicholls.
Nick and Ellie meet under auspicious circumstances: at an election-viewing party the night that Barack Obama is chosen as the next president of the United States. Nick, who loves nothing more than films and works as a projectionist at a theater, instantly falls for Ellie and sees the entire movie of their relationship play out in his mind. Now it’s four years later, Obama is about to be elected president once again, and Ellie’s moved out of their apartment. Forlorn and desperate to figure out where it all went wrong, Nick retraces their entire relationship as the plot jumps back and forth among the night they met, the present day, and the challenges the couple faced along the way. Meanwhile, Nick finds himself falling further and further into despair as he loses his apartment, his parents move away, and his theater switches from film to digital, rendering his job obsolete. With his entire life in shambles, Nick must finally look inward to figure out why things with Ellie really didn’t work out. Nick tends to think in movie references, many of which are very clever, particularly an oft-remembered argument with Ellie about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Unlike in many books and movies with similar plots, Nicholls doesn’t treat his female character like the bad guy for stomping on the male character’s heart and ego. Instead, he examines her point of view as she reminds Nick that life is more than just movies—or, at least, life doesn’t turn out like the movies sometimes, and Nick may have to make some big changes if he wants a Hollywood ending. Their relationship has cinematic highs and believable lows, with fully rounded characters and smart, snappy, romantic comedy–worthy dialogue. Nick’s and Ellie’s real lives aren’t a movie, but as Nicholls tells it, they might have a happily-ever-after anyway.
A delightfully sweet, funny, and heartbreaking ode to love stories, both onscreen and off-.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2687-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A poignant and skillfully crafted second-chance romance.
A father’s request leads a soldier back to his hometown and the woman he thought he’d lost forever in Yarros’ (The Last Letter, 2019, etc.) novel.
Growing up in the small town of Alba, Colorado, Camden “Cam” Daniels had a reputation as a troublemaker. After high school, he became a Green Beret and inspired his brother, Sullivan, to join the Army. When a split-second decision on the battlefield ends with Sullivan’s death, the dead soldier’s father, Arthur, and the town of Alba can’t forgive Cam. Six years later, however, Cam receives a voicemail message from his father. At 58, Arthur is dealing with the devastating effects of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and wants Cam to help him get the “do not resuscitate” order opposed by his elder son, Alexander, known as “Xander,” who’s become Alba’s mayor. Cam returns to Alba and encounters Willow Bradley, his childhood friend and Sullivan’s former girlfriend. He loves Willow but didn’t reveal it after she began dating his brother, and he’s unaware that she loves him, too. To garner support for his father’s case, Cam works with Willow to turn Alba’s historic Rose Rowan Mine into a tourist attraction, and their rekindled friendship turns passionate. But Cam wonders if their relationship can survive the pressures of his father’s court case and the town’s scrutiny. In chapters that alternate between Cam’s and Willow’s first-person perspectives, the romance develops at a slow burn as the couple struggles to make peace with Cam’s guilt over Sullivan’s death and other issues. Although their relationship is the heart of the novel, Cam’s efforts to help his father and resolve their troubled past form a well-developed subplot as he and his brother prepare to face off in court. A gifted storyteller, Yarros captures well the rhythms of life in a once thriving town, and her book succeeds as both a contemporary romance and a sensitively observed story of a son trying to reconnect with his estranged father before it is too late.
A poignant and skillfully crafted second-chance romance.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64063-816-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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