A paint-by-numbers thriller by bestselling romance writer Garwood.
Dr. Ellie Sullivan has had her fair share of trouble: At 11, an older boy stalked and nearly killed her, sending her into hiding. Now that she’s finished her medical residency at a St. Louis hospital (she’s a brilliant surgeon) and her stalker Evan Patterson has been released from an institution, she’s not sure where to turn. To make matters worse, while jogging she is witness to the attempted murder of an FBI agent and is soon involved in the case. The Landrys are husband-and-wife weapons dealers (as well as murderers and kidnappers) that the FBI has been trying to nail for years. Unfortunately, their witnesses keep disappearing. Ellie witnesses the failed sting and is soon being guarded by Agent Max Daniels. Happily, both feel an immediate, uncontrollable passion. Max is ruggedly handsome, forthright and a little bit controlling. Ellie is any man’s dream come true: gorgeous but laid back, brilliant, but a little insecure, and the kind of girl who wants to end the evening watching SportsCenter with a cold beer. And absolutely no post-coital snuggling. Amid the danger, they begin to fall in love, even though neither is up for a commitment. When Ellie needs to go home to South Carolina for her sister’s wedding, Max soon follows; it seems one of the witnesses to the shooting has disappeared. And it is just as well—psychotic stalker Evan Patterson has been sighted in town at the local gun shop. With the Landry’s hit man driving to South Carolina and Evan Patterson on the loose, the question is who will to try to kill Ellie first. Undoubtedly Garwood is a pro—the pacing is taut, the characters are swiftly drawn and she even throws in a few surprises before the obligatory happy ending. But everything is too formulaic to be truly suspenseful, too clichéd to be truly romantic.
Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-525-95225-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
A funny, sexy page-turner that warns: Keep your friends close and their avatars closer.
A criminology professor uses a fake dating profile to flirt with her best friend in Lauren's (Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating, 2018, etc.) latest.
Looking for a date to a commencement banquet at UC Santa Barbara, Millie Morris and her platonic friends Reid Campbell, Stephen “Ed” D’Onofrio, Alex Ramirez, and Christopher Hill decide to join a dating site. But when Millie and Reid have a one-night stand (parting ways early, making it a half-night stand), their feelings for each other start to interfere with their plans. Reid pursues two online matches, the first a pretty but bland woman named Daisy and the other a fascinating woman named Catherine whose face is obscured in her profile picture. Writing as Catherine, Millie opens up to Reid about all the things she’s been afraid to talk to him about in person—her home life, her past, and her true feelings for him. But when they start to get closer in real life, too, she realizes that her ruse may cost her both her friendship with Reid and any prospect of a relationship. Meanwhile, Reid is torn between Millie and her digital alter ego. With her split personality—aloof and sarcastic in person, honest and vulnerable online—Millie brings great tension to the book, even if her quirky obsession with serial killers is underutilized. Text messages headed with avatars and wrapped in conversation bubbles add a fun texture to the rapid-fire dialogue. Though the commencement banquet turns out to be little more than a footnote, it’s worth pulling an all-nighter to see if Reid and Millie will graduate from friends to lovers.
A funny, sexy page-turner that warns: Keep your friends close and their avatars closer.Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9740-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
A delightfully sweet, funny, and heartbreaking ode to love stories, both onscreen and off-.
A movie-obsessed projectionist looks back at his relationship and wonders where it all went wrong in this debut from Nicholls.
Nick and Ellie meet under auspicious circumstances: at an election-viewing party the night that Barack Obama is chosen as the next president of the United States. Nick, who loves nothing more than films and works as a projectionist at a theater, instantly falls for Ellie and sees the entire movie of their relationship play out in his mind. Now it’s four years later, Obama is about to be elected president once again, and Ellie’s moved out of their apartment. Forlorn and desperate to figure out where it all went wrong, Nick retraces their entire relationship as the plot jumps back and forth among the night they met, the present day, and the challenges the couple faced along the way. Meanwhile, Nick finds himself falling further and further into despair as he loses his apartment, his parents move away, and his theater switches from film to digital, rendering his job obsolete. With his entire life in shambles, Nick must finally look inward to figure out why things with Ellie really didn’t work out. Nick tends to think in movie references, many of which are very clever, particularly an oft-remembered argument with Ellie about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Unlike in many books and movies with similar plots, Nicholls doesn’t treat his female character like the bad guy for stomping on the male character’s heart and ego. Instead, he examines her point of view as she reminds Nick that life is more than just movies—or, at least, life doesn’t turn out like the movies sometimes, and Nick may have to make some big changes if he wants a Hollywood ending. Their relationship has cinematic highs and believable lows, with fully rounded characters and smart, snappy, romantic comedy–worthy dialogue. Nick’s and Ellie’s real lives aren’t a movie, but as Nicholls tells it, they might have a happily-ever-after anyway.
A delightfully sweet, funny, and heartbreaking ode to love stories, both onscreen and off-.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2687-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
