O’Connell makes this sweet treat go down smoothly thanks to snappy dialogue and evocative scenes of Chicago in the summer.
O’Connell (Bachelorette #1, 2003) takes another stab at poolside reading, this time examining the disparate worlds of pop music and corporate law.
Jane Marlow, a buttoned-up Chicago attorney, is gunning for partnership at her law firm. In her determined effort to get ahead, she has woefully neglected all the other areas of her life: family, friends and especially romance. Life gets deliciously complicated for Jane when her slacker brother, Andy, discovers that a decade-old pop song, “Janey 245,” was written about her. While Jane learns to kick up her heels and enjoy her celebrity status as “Janey,” Teddy Rock, the song’s author, is attempting to make a comeback. After years out of the spotlight, Teddy basks in the media attention Andy and Jane bring to his legendary song. Although O’Connell’s characters are thinly drawn and even predictable at times, they are also delightfully self-centered. Through her relationship with Teddy, Jane hopes to gain a lucrative client for her law firm and secure the coveted partnership. In turn, Teddy latches on to Jane for an image boost—Jane’s fresh-scrubbed appeal offers a welcome break from his past. Teddy hopes to distance himself from tabloid articles regaling his trips to rehab and his tawdry affairs. O’Connell is adept at exposing the manipulative nature of both the legal profession and the music industry. It’s decadent fun to see Teddy’s oleaginous agent create a media circus as Teddy and Jane rekindle their childhood relationship in full view of the paparazzi. The action is a bit sluggish until O’Connell tosses in the requisite plot twist, in the form of a love triangle. Just as Jane is becoming intoxicated with her taste of the rock-’n’-roll life, Drew Weston, a handsome lawyer, shows up at Jane’s firm to lend a hand on a million-dollar case and remind Jane of her true nature.
O’Connell makes this sweet treat go down smoothly thanks to snappy dialogue and evocative scenes of Chicago in the summer.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2005
ISBN: 0-451-21645-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
A lovely, humorous ode to romantic comedies.
A film agency assistant follows all the rom-com rules in an attempt to save her job…and maybe fall in love in the process.
Evie Summers has always loved love—specifically in romantic comedies. She grew up dreaming of writing her own film, and her father was her biggest champion. But after his death, she lost her writing spark. Now she’s stuck toiling as an assistant at a film agency, waiting for the day she gets her big break and gets promoted to agent. It seems she may get her chance when her agency’s biggest and worst-behaved client, Ezra Chester, needs some motivation to produce the rom-com screenplay he promised. Ezra thinks rom-coms are trite and unrealistic, but he agrees to finish his screenplay if Evie proves to him that meet-cutes can lead to true love. Evie has to re-create some of her favorite rom-com scenes and report back to Ezra. Spilling orange juice on a stranger, à la Notting Hill? Check. Sharing a car with someone, just like in When Harry Met Sally…? Check. Staying at a charming cottage that seems to be straight out of The Holiday? Check. Evie tries it all, humiliating herself in front of the general public, including a cute but quiet single father and his precocious daughter. Meanwhile, she also has to help plan a bachelorette party and wedding for her hilariously high-maintenance bridezilla of a friend, but her dedication to work keeps getting in the way. But just like in all the best rom-coms, Evie might find true love where she least expects it. Evie is a scrappy, winning heroine whose decisions may occasionally be frustrating (as is the rom-com tradition, there are lots of miscommunications) but are always well intentioned. The references to classic films of the genre will delight rom-com fans, as will the sweet romance. The best scenes, though, are with Evie and her three best friends, who have the warmly mocking dynamic of friends in a Richard Curtis film.
A lovely, humorous ode to romantic comedies.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-54231-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
A lasciviously entertaining Regency romp.
A scarred, sharp-tongued nobleman meets his feisty match in Howard’s (What a Scot Wants, 2013, etc.) historical romance.
It’s 1819, and 25-year-old Lady Astrid Everleigh, a cash-strapped Englishwoman, must find a way to save her 16-year-old sister, Isobel, from getting married off to the loathsome Earl of Beaumont; Astrid previously refused his proposal herself, and as a result, he ruined her reputation and marriage prospects with a “horrible lie about her lack of virtue.” For hard-to-understand reasons, Astrid’s only hope is to marry the wealthy, powerful, and single Lord Thane Harte, Duke of Beswick, and she puts the proposal to him after barging in on his bath. Alas, she’s horrified by the scars, left by French bayonets years ago, on Thane’s face and body—a result of Beaumont’s abandoning his post, and a subsequent French ambush. Thane’s temper earned him the moniker “the Beast of Beswick.” Fortunately, she observes, the French spared his “luscious mouth,” “burning” eyes, and muscular torso—among other body parts. Instant bickering ensues, and when Astrid installs herself with Isobel at Beswick Park to catalog Thane’s Ming porcelains, the attraction between Astrid and the duke grows. The young noblewoman also voices feminist theory, which Thane eagerly appreciates—though sometimes less for what she says than how she says it: “Her eyes shone with indignant passion, lips parted, breasts heaving.” Their wedding night comes rather early on, but Howard successfully keeps the sparks flying thanks to Thane’s self-pitying mood cycles—worried that Astrid will leave him because of his scars, he gets cold and nasty; Astrid snaps back and maddens him with scandalous gowns, and bodice-ripping follows. The author’s reprise of “Beauty and the Beast” motifs effectively mixes Jane Austen–ite manners with lewd mores. However, it’s full of anachronistic language—“I don’t want a fucking prince, you idiot. They’re too pretty, too full of themselves, too much maintenance”—and suffers third-act problems as long-anticipated comeuppances fizzle inconclusively. Fortunately, vigorous prose, lively characters—including Thane’s Aunt Mabel, who beds all the footmen—and lubricious rounds of fighting and sex will keep readers turning pages.
A lasciviously entertaining Regency romp.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-741-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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