A predictable romance that fails to break any new ground in the genre.
Fate is written in the stars when girl meets rock singer in this novel.
Vi Golden is determined to be an incredible woman of honor for her best friend Sorcha Rosenbloom’s wedding. What she didn’t plan on is falling for sexy rock star Liam Macklin, the brother of her friend’s fiance. Liam is typecast perfection: a handsome singer who has maintained his humility and family ties. And fate has a hand in the game, as Liam dreamed about Vi and wrote a song about her long before they met. The two lovebirds hit it off during the wedding festivities and vow to reunite soon. They manage to slip in a night of romance before Liam has to fly off to continue his tour and Vi must return to San Francisco to re-enter her life as a Realtor and artist. Unfortunately, Liam’s lifestyle necessitates a background check on his lady love and Vi, feeling betrayed, bolts for home. Bigel (The Daimon Soldier Trilogy, 2019, etc.) devotes the remainder of the novel to the two attempting a reconciliation following the fight. Both Vi and Liam are likable characters. She is funny, beautiful, and artistically gifted and he is thoughtful, gorgeous, and vocally talented. Although the author tosses in a night of lovemaking, there are unfortunately not enough steamy scenes to make up for the lack of narrative tension. What there is here is a plethora of dialogue that dissects a romance only a few days old. Liam chats with his bodyguard; Vi talks to her second mother. There’s even a lot of awkward conversation during foreplay. At the sight of Liam’s chiseled body, Vi asks: “Do you work out a lot? I run and do yoga but I don’t go to a gym.” Liam, apparently, works out “to manage stress and keep my endurance up for performing.” And on and on. A little less talk and a lot more action would go a long way.
A predictable romance that fails to break any new ground in the genre.Pub Date: April 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73235-724-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: InWorld Studios
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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