The plot twists are genuinely surprising, and the complicated relationships give this page-turner a touch of humor and a ton...
On her 40th birthday, a woman uncovers long-buried family secrets connected to the night she got pregnant—and gets a chance to make things right.
It’s not a happy birthday for Harlow, and the tragedies are piled on like icing on a layer cake. Her mother, Vivian Ausby, is on her deathbed. Her ex-husband, Patrick McDade, is the sole benefactor of her mother’s will. Her estranged best friend, Savannah “Van” Pratt, is also in the hospital—and dying of cancer. But a chance reunion with her first love, Jade Ryan, brings up old memories and ignites new feelings. Told in five parts, the story begins in Vivian’s hospital room and flashes back to the night that changed the course of Harlow’s life. At the time, Harlow was a shy 20-year-old with a disapproving mother and an ugly birthmark on her left leg; she didn’t fit in with the upper crust of South of Broad, an exclusive neighborhood in Charleston, South Carolina. If not for her mother’s frosty relationship with Jade’s family, Harlow would have happily chosen easygoing Jade over stuck-up, entitled Patrick. But 20 years later, Harlow is once again single and still pining for the life she should’ve had. It’s easy to see why she’s held a torch for Jade all these years: Now a doting father, Jade even got a tattoo to match his daughter’s unusual birthmark. His relationship with Harlow is as sweet as it is steamy. But Harlow doesn’t know whether he’ll take her back after all this time. Though Van betrayed Harlow years ago, her sassy Southern humor—“A fat ass is the best punishment, and hers busts out like a can of warm biscuits”—makes her easy to forgive. The key to Harlow’s happiness, then, is standing up to her mother and Patrick. But Vivian’s nurse, Beth, has a secret that could overturn everything Harlow thought she knew about her family. The final pages include an excerpt of Rae’s debut, The Achilles Heel (2014).
The plot twists are genuinely surprising, and the complicated relationships give this page-turner a touch of humor and a ton of drama.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9960922-4-1
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Karyn Rae Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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