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ARM CANDY

Despite some witty banter, there is little to distinguish this book, or Eden as a character, from others of the chick-lit...

Iconic muse of the New York City art scene contemplates cougardom as 40 looms.

Eden is sure her ethereal beauty will be her ticket out of her backwater hometown. Drawn to Manhattan by the lure of a modeling career, the fetching high-school dropout, after a brief stint as head groupie to a rock star, latches on to Wes, a sensitive, bespectacled architecture student. Soon, however, an older man, Otto, a painter at the top of the art heap, notices 19-year-old Eden and whisks her away to his rarified world of international jetsetters, well-heeled collectors and post-Warhol hedonism. Otto paints Eden in various states of undress, and, overnight, she’s a worldwide sensation, beating out Demi Moore for glossy cover space. Otto and Eden cohabit, travel the world and produce a son, but they never marry. Through it all, Eden turns to her trash-talking high-school buddy Allison for moral support. Allison’s fluency in the latest argot, and her role as cynical foil to Eden’s at times enervating guilelessness, enliven the book, but not often enough. When Otto seduces his latest dewy assistant, Eden storms out, heading uptown, where her looks, still holding at 39, net another conquest: Chase, scion of old-money Upper East Siders, handsome enough to flummox an entire gay bar even if he’s only there for Broadway Karaoke. He falls hard for Eden, although she’s 12 years older, scandalizing his mother Brooke. His grandmother Ruthie urges Chase to bust out of his noblesse oblige and throw off the yoke of Brooke and his “Hitchcock blonde” girlfriend Liesel, whom Chase has kept hankering after the diamond in Ruthie’s vault way too long. When Liesel dumps him, Chase’s path to Eden is clear, but a chance encounter reopens Eden’s roads not taken, with predictable results.

Despite some witty banter, there is little to distinguish this book, or Eden as a character, from others of the chick-lit genre.

Pub Date: May 1, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-525-95159-9

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010

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MAGIC HOUR

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

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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

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