Charming and heartfelt, this complicated love story delivers a well-developed journey of self-discovery and romance.
It’s raining men for a spunky lawyer-turned-detective in Volume 3 of the MisAdventures of Miss Lilly series.
Months after Lilly Katherine Atkins dusted off her boots and returned home to Brooks, Oklahoma, her cheating ex-fiance, Van Peyton Ehlers, is back in town and up to no good; her high school sweetheart, Cash Stetson, is out of rehab and working at her family’s ranch; and Spencer Locke, the former FBI agent who toils at her mentor’s law firm, won’t stop trying to rescue her. When cattle rustlers strike her family’s ranch, the three men in her life distract her as she tries to round up the culprits with the help of a gaggle of girlfriends. “I’m a terrible rancher’s daughter,” Lilly muses. “I love all the animals like pets. Yes, I eat meat…but it’s hard not to have” a certain fondness “for heifers that will follow you around like dogs.” The drawls are thick and the hair is high, but the characters in this installment are more introspective than cartoonish. Confronted with so many men at once, Lilly has an identity crisis, and many bad hair days and wardrobe choices ensue. Her soul-searching takes on a lightly religious tone—more so than in the previous books by Lloyd (Mo(u)rning Joy, 2015, etc.)—as she turns to her Christian faith for solace. Her family and friends, notably Fae Lynn, who’s now pregnant, also provide the type of homespun wisdom that makes small-town stories so appealing. Long talks over homemade cookies or store-bought cakes that will “do in a pinch” add vivid sensory details, as do the quiet moments when Lilly’s Poppa gives her a reassuring pat on the hand. Meanwhile, a rumored sex tape raises the stakes for Lilly to get Van out of her life for good. Aside from her overuse of the word “allegedly,” the straight-shooting heroine is a good foil for the smarmy lawyer. Cash, who had a certain appeal in the previous novels, now seems like a bad habit that Lilly needs to kick. And Spencer’s levelheaded approach to Lilly’s nonstop drama really starts to work for him. Although Lilly’s sleuthing takes a back seat to her many failed relationships, the final showdown with the cattle rustlers adds excitement to an otherwise emotion-heavy plot.
Charming and heartfelt, this complicated love story delivers a well-developed journey of self-discovery and romance.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 203
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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