Despite its over-the-top premise, romance-writer Michaels’s maiden voyage into mystery is deeply conventional.
If only she hadn’t canceled her last appointment with Dr. Bob. One missed session with her therapist and bestselling mystery-writer Maggie Kelly’s gone over the edge; she thinks that her Regency hero, the “damnable, damned sexy” Alexandre Blake, Viscount Saint Just, and his aide-de-camp Sterling Balder have materialized in her living room, determined to torment her with their 19th-century take on 21st-century urban life. As days pass and the two time-travelers remain, they comment freely and rather imperiously on Maggie’s foibles: her inability to shake loose of slimy ex-boyfriend Kirk Toland (whose Toland Books publishes the Saint Just oeuvre); her loyalty to best friend Bernice Toland-James (her editor as well as Kirk's ex); her trust in agent Tabitha Leighton (who negotiates contracts first and tells Maggie the amount later); even her dependence on Dr. Bob. Meanwhile, Saint Just has ventured forth to experience firsthand the joys of New York, buying a fake ID from a couple a street thugs named Killer and Snake, and getting Maggie’s doorman, Argyle Jackson, an audition for an off-Broadway musical. When Kirk keels over dead of mushroom poisoning after dining chez Maggie, Saint Just is just the man she needs to help clear her name—even if the task requires him to cross swords with Lieutenant Steve Wendell of the NYPD, whose longing glances at Maggie warn Saint Just that Wendell wants to look into more than her alibi.
Despite its over-the-top premise, romance-writer Michaels’s maiden voyage into mystery is deeply conventional.Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-57566-879-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A smooth blend of suspense and romance. As ever, the author's trademark effortless style keeps a complex plot moving without...
Megaselling Roberts (River's End, 1999, etc.) goes to Napa Valley for the tale of an Italian-American family wine producers rocked by scandal and a series of murders.
Dynasty head Tereza Giambelli knows that her granddaughter Sophia is the only family member capable of running a multimillion-dollar wine business—and no one contradicts La Signora. It's just as well the lovely young woman is still single: Tereza has plans for her. The matriarch has recently married Eli MacMillan, the American founder of another famous wine company. Eli's grandson Tyler knows everything there is to know about producing wine, from the vineyard to the vat. Ruggedly handsome, intelligent and earthy, he's a perfect match for public-relations whiz Sophia—or so thinks Tereza. The two young people begin to work together; Tyler teaches Sophia the fine art of making wine and making love. But other family members hope to claim their share of the Giambelli fortune, and people start dying mysteriously, including Sophia's good-for-nothing father, Tony Avano. Long divorced from long-suffering Pilar Giambelli, Tony led an opulent, self-indulgent life that provides plenty of murder suspects. He might have been killed by the mob, or a jealous mistress, or his spoiled brother-in-law, Tereza's lazy son, who's produced a passel of brats with his foolish Italian wife in the hopes of making Tereza happy. Everyone has a motive, and nothing is what it seems, Sophia discovers, but Tyler stands by her. Then a bottle of tainted merlot kills a company exec. A tragic mishap caused by poisonous plants growing near the vines? Or deliberate product tampering intended to destroy the company? Sophia and Tyler will need to delve even deeper into the convoluted and sometimes unsavory history of the family and its three-generation business.
A smooth blend of suspense and romance. As ever, the author's trademark effortless style keeps a complex plot moving without a hitch.Pub Date: March 19, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14712-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
Entertaining and unpredictable; Reid makes a compelling argument for happiness in every life.
Reid’s latest (After I Do, 2014, etc.) explores two parallel universes in which a young woman hopes to find her soul mate and change her life for the better.
After ending an affair with a married man, Hannah Martin is reunited with her high school sweetheart, Ethan, at a bar in Los Angeles. Should she go home with her friends and catch up with him later, or should they stay out and have another drink? It doesn’t seem like either decision would have earth-shattering consequences, but Reid has a knack for finding skeletons in unexpected closets. Two vastly different scenarios play out in alternating chapters: in one, Hannah and Ethan reconnect as if no time has passed; in the other, Hannah lands in the hospital alone after a freak accident that marks the first of many surprising plot twists. Hannah’s best friend, Gabby, believes in soul mates, and though Hannah has trouble making decisions—even when picking a snack from a vending machine—she and Gabby discover how their belief systems can alter their world as much as their choices. “Believing in fate is like living on cruise control,” Hannah says. What follows is a thoughtful analysis of free will versus fate in which Hannah finds that disasters can bring unexpected blessings, blessings can bring unexpected disasters, and that most people are willing to bring Hannah her favorite cinnamon rolls. “Because even when it looks like she’s made a terrible mistake,” Hannah’s mother observes, “things will always work out for Hannah.” The larger question becomes whether Hannah’s choices will ultimately affect her happiness—and it’s one that’s answered on a hopeful note as Hannah tries to do the right thing in every situation she faces.
Entertaining and unpredictable; Reid makes a compelling argument for happiness in every life.Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-7688-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
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