Peppered with irrelevant detail and dialogue documenting every dull moment of Cristina’s quest, the book fails to incite...
Barcelona’s Molist, head of the European Branch of Paramount Home Entertainment, combines the history of the Templar Knights with chick lit in a thriller that offers an insider’s view of the beautiful Spanish city, but ultimately turns out more snooze than thrill.
Cristina, born in Barcelona of a Spanish mother and American father, spent the most memorable days of her youth in Spain with her buddies Luis and Oriol, playing treasure-hunting games conjured up by Oriol’s father, Enric. But when she moved to the United States as a teen, Cristina lost contact with her friends. Years after Enric’s suicide, Cristina receives a mysterious ring, as well as a summons to a “second” reading of Enric’s will. She goes to Barcelona over the objections of her mother and the man she is engaged to marry. When she arrives, Cristina teams once again with her friends to find a treasure rumored to belong to the Templar Knights with postmortem clues courtesy of Enric. Although her mother warns against it, Cristina soon moves from her hotel into the home of Oriol’s mother, the oddly menacing lesbian Alicia. Meanwhile, Cristina also runs into the handsome man she met aboard her flight from New York, with whom she feels compelled to flirt even after discovering he may not be all he appears. Shadowed by an oddly fierce and menacing stranger, Cristina suffers through vivid nightmares rooted in a violent and unknown past. She tries to decipher the dreams, as well as Oriol’s sexual leanings and feelings for her. As the three old friends draw closer to the truth about the treasure, Cristina grows to understand Oriol and his obsession with finding it. Molist’s book is crammed with pages of tediously reported history, seen through the eyes of one of the characters. Although an attorney, Cristina’s conversations and judgment are more what one would expect of a 15-year-old, and the plot is neither intricate nor clever.
Peppered with irrelevant detail and dialogue documenting every dull moment of Cristina’s quest, the book fails to incite reader interest or empathy.Pub Date: May 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7432-9751-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2008
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
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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