Glum, predictable soap opera with a standard twist or two.
Four doormats complain about all the feet.
Childhood friends Gretchen, Mary Sue, Pamela, and Dixie are still there for each other decades later, undaunted by disappointment and divorce. Now that saintly Mary Sue has been diagnosed with breast cancer, her friends gather for a final lakeside night together before her mastectomy. She’s gone off to cry herself to sleep when up pops Walter Lambley, Mary Sue’s loathsome boyfriend. He’s raging drunk and waving a videotape, apparently of himself and Mary Sue having sex, and announces he won’t want her anymore after such disfiguring surgery. Her loyal friends, appalled, try to take the video away from him, whereupon Walter falls, breaks his neck on a big rock in the ensuing scuffle, and dies instantly. Gretchen, Pamela, and Dixie summon up the courage to drag his corpse to his Porsche and send it sailing into the lake. No one’s the wiser as the foursome resume their endless kvetching about the men in their lives. Embittered Gretchen never got over her college rape and has never liked sex. She’s divorcing her unfaithful husband. Pamela is trapped in a loveless, childless marriage to a domineering old man and still pines for her first love, a self-absorbed writer. Dixie and her erstwhile soulmate simply drifted apart over the years and she’s now having a secret affair with a married Italian peasant (he actually lives in Italy, which makes it an easy secret to keep). Mary Sue’s doctor-husband ditched her for a tennis-playing socialite, but she has to have a man in her life, hence the need for Walter. A subplot of sorts unfolds as the girlfriends search for other sex videotapes and encounter a mysterious stranger in Walter’s house. Now, who could it be? And who really cares?
Glum, predictable soap opera with a standard twist or two.Pub Date: May 3, 2002
ISBN: 0-684-87387-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable...
An unlucky woman finally gets lucky in love on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii.
From getting her hand stuck in a claw machine at age 6 to losing her job, Olive Torres has never felt that luck was on her side. But her fortune changes when she scores a free vacation after her identical twin sister and new brother-in-law get food poisoning at their wedding buffet and are too sick to go on their honeymoon. The only catch is that she’ll have to share the honeymoon suite with her least favorite person—Ethan Thomas, the brother of the groom. To make matters worse, Olive’s new boss and Ethan’s ex-girlfriend show up in Hawaii, forcing them both to pretend to be newlyweds so they don’t blow their cover, as their all-inclusive vacation package is nontransferable and in her sister’s name. Plus, Ethan really wants to save face in front of his ex. The story is told almost exclusively from Olive’s point of view, filtering all communication through her cynical lens until Ethan can win her over (and finally have his say in the epilogue). To get to the happily-ever-after, Ethan doesn’t have to prove to Olive that he can be a better man, only that he was never the jerk she thought he was—for instance, when she thought he was judging her for eating cheese curds, maybe he was actually thinking of asking her out. Blending witty banter with healthy adult communication, the fake newlyweds have real chemistry as they talk it out over snorkeling trips, couples massages, and a few too many tropical drinks to get to the truth—that they’re crazy about each other.
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable as well as free.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2803-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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