A sweet, albeit by-the-book, tale of human connection.
A sick young boy and an elderly man looking for something to live for form a deep bond in this debut novel.
Murray McBride is turning 100, but he’s in no celebratory mood. Still mourning the death of his beloved wife, Jenny, 18 months ago, Murray feels his life has run its course. He’s outlived not only his wife, but also his two sons, who died after long lives. His only remaining family, his grandson, Chance, seems to only be after his money. Murray’s Roman Catholic faith has been the main thing keeping him from suicide recently, but he resolves to make his 100th birthday the last day he takes the daily pill his lungs need to function, figuring such a death doesn’t really count. Vaguely hoping to comfort the ailing on his last full day, Murray wanders into a local heart ward and meets someone who changes his life: 10-year-old Jason Cashman, who desperately needs a transplant and must tote around an oxygen cart. After Jason leaves the hospital with his cold, money-driven father, Murray finds a list of the boy’s five wishes to be granted before he dies. Murray mourns lost time spent with his own sons due to his professional baseball career with the Chicago Cubs, and sees an opportunity to atone. With the assistance of Jason’s wise-beyond-her-years neighbor, Tiegan Rose Marie Atherton, Murray sets out to help the boy kiss a girl, hit a home run, and fulfill his dreams. Siple’s plot devices, messages, and character types will feel very familiar to fans of Hallmark movies and other inspirational tales, and these predictable beats mean his players sometimes feel more like moving cogs than fully complex human beings. But his story is still readable and well-told. Murray’s struggle to find meaning after outliving almost everyone in his life who mattered to him is one of the book’s most sensitively rendered elements. Jason’s reckoning with mortality provides some touching moments as well. But Siple struggles to capture the speech and mannerisms of a 10-year-old boy (Jason’s emails and ebullient statements are peppered with “Schweet!” and “Dude!”), which limits his impact as a character.
A sweet, albeit by-the-book, tale of human connection.Pub Date: June 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68433-040-9
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A steamy, glitzy, and tender tale of college intrigue.
In this opener to Kennedy’s (Hot & Bothered, 2017, etc.) Briar U romance series, two likable students keep getting their signals crossed.
Twenty-one-year-old Summer Heyward-Di Laurentis is expelled from Brown University in the middle of her junior year because she was responsible for a fire at the Kappa Beta Nu sorority house. Fortunately, her father has connections, so she’s now enrolled in Briar University, a prestigious institution about an hour outside Boston. But as she’s about to move into Briar’s Kappa Beta Nu house, she’s asked to leave by the sisters, who don’t want her besmirching their reputation. Her older brother Dean, who’s a former Briar hockey star, comes to her rescue; his buddies, who are still on the hockey team, need a fourth roommate for their townhouse. Three good-looking hockey jocks and a very rich, gorgeous fashion major under the same roof—what could go wrong? Summer becomes quickly infatuated with one of her housemates: Dean’s best friend Colin “Fitzy” Fitzgerald. There’s a definite spark between them, and they exchange smoldering looks, but the tattooed Fitzy, who’s also a video game reviewer and designer, is an introvert who prefers no “drama” in his life. Summer, however, is a charming extrovert, although she has an inferiority complex about her flagging scholastic acumen. As the story goes on, the pair seem to misinterpret each other’s every move. Meanwhile, another roommate and potential suitor, Hunter Davenport, is waiting in the wings. Kennedy’s novel is full of sex, alcohol, and college-level profanity, but it never becomes formulaic. The author adroitly employs snappy dialogue, steady pacing, and humor, as in a scene at a runway fashion show featuring Briar jocks parading in Summer-designed swimwear. The book also manages to touch on some serious subjects, including learning disabilities and abusive behavior by faculty members. Summer and Fitzy’s repeated stumbles propel the plot through engaging twists and turns; the characters trade off narrating the story, which gives each of them a chance to reveal some substance.
A steamy, glitzy, and tender tale of college intrigue.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72482-199-7
Page Count: 372
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A presold prefab blockbuster, what with King's Carrie hitting the moviehouses, Salem's Lot being lensed, The Shining itself sold to Warner Bros. and tapped as a Literary Guild full selection, NAL paperback, etc. (enough activity to demand an afterlife to consummate it all).
The setting is The Overlook, a palatial resort on a Colorado mountain top, snowbound and closed down for the long, long winter. Jack Torrance, a booze-fighting English teacher with a history of violence, is hired as caretaker and, hoping to finish a five-act tragedy he's writing, brings his wife Wendy and small son Danny to the howling loneliness of the half-alive and mad palazzo. The Overlook has a gruesome past, scenes from which start popping into the present in various suites and the ballroom. At first only Danny, gifted with second sight (he's a "shiner"), can see them; then the whole family is being zapped by satanic forces. The reader needs no supersight to glimpse where the story's going as King's formula builds to a hotel reeling with horrors during Poesque New Year's Eve revelry and confetti outta nowhere....
Back-prickling indeed despite the reader's unwillingness at being mercilessly manipulated.
Pub Date: Jan. 28, 1976
ISBN: 0385121679
Page Count: 453
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1976
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