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DRAWING LESSONS

Name: DRAWING LESSONS
Author: Julia Gabriel
ISBN: 978-0692357422

by Julia Gabriel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 15, 2015

A provocative, but not picture-perfect, romance novel.

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A fragile woman discovers love and lust with her seductive drawing teacher in Gabriel’s (Next to You, 2014, etc.) contemporary romance.

Marie is living apart from her soon-to-be-ex-husband, U.S. Sen. Richard Macintyre. Her best friend, Nishi, gives her drawing lessons for her 30th birthday, and the teacher turns out to be a sexy French artist named Luc Marchand; the lessons take place at Luc’s Colonial-era farmhouse in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. Marie’s father, William, a lobbyist and former senator, and Eileen, her fundraiser mother, want Marie to make up with Richard, in spite of his very public relationship with a new lover. Eileen counsels Marie that “Mistresses rarely become wives.” Before Richard left her, she was a dutiful wife and daughter whose life was purposeful and “black and white”—not gray, like it feels to her now. Luc seduces her out of this gray zone and lets her experience color: “Draw blue,” he says. When she doesn’t understand his request, he kisses her and then pushes her away, explaining, “I wanted to turn off your brain, so you could draw.” But was the kiss really just part of a drawing lesson? A subsequent session features a velvet blindfold and Luc urging Marie to touch his naked body. “What does that feel like?” he asks. “Think how that might look on paper.” It’s no shock that they become lovers, but it is a surprise when Richard calls off the divorce. Marie, now in love with Luc, strategizes a way to make Richard reconsider, but neither her plan nor his subsequent actions ring true. Gabriel does depict flirting well, and she paints white-hot sex scenes. Sensual, flawed Luc’s dialogue and internal monologues are also sharp and unpredictable. That said, readers may find it puzzling what a man like Luc would see in milquetoast Marie, even if she is beautiful, with hair that’s a “mélange of red and brown.” Marie also mumbles, slumps, and thinks that “[s]exy French artists were not interested in women like her.” Surely in the 10-plus years that Luc’s been on the market he could have chosen a woman who doesn’t have “more baggage than a 747.”

A provocative, but not picture-perfect, romance novel.

Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2015

ISBN: 978-0692357422

Page Count: 310

Publisher: Serif Books

Review Posted Online: March 18, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THIS REMINDS ME OF US
by Julia Gabriel

- BOOK REVIEW
HEARTS ON FIRE
by Julia Gabriel

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.