A human and humorous look at two headstrong characters battling the challenges that come with falling in love.
The worlds of thoroughbred racing and high-end wine-making provide a backdrop to this novel that mixes international romance with a mysterious death.
Meredith Montgomery is always racing to something, whether it’s a meeting to talk about her new wine that’s about to launch or to hit the trails in preparation for another marathon. She’s the kind of woman who seems to have it all—but that description also includes breast cancer. A second bout with the disease has Meredith running scared. Before she undergoes surgery, she takes what she hopes will be a quick trip to Edinburgh to do some research on her family’s winery. There, she runs into an intriguing character, thoroughbred breeder Elliott Fraser. The two are immediately attracted to one another, but their ties to their work and their smartphones threaten their budding romance. The second novel in the Fraser family story proves that author Logan (The Ruby Brooch, 2012) has a smooth, sincere storytelling style that turns what could be an ordinary romance into much more. The heroes, Meredith and Elliott, are extremely human despite their wealth and power. Meredith is wounded from a bad marriage and her cancer trauma, and Elliott is recovering from a past attack on his life and reeling from a current attack on his horses, which could cost him his family business. When the two ultimately get together, their volatile love is strained by their inability to relinquish control—which is part of the reason the story works, since every time it looks like the couple is going to succeed, a realistic problem gets in their way. At times, however, the book wanders into typical romance land with silly plotlines (one involving a ghost that interferes in everyone’s lives) and a rather easily solved mystery plot. Despite these minor flaws, though, the amount of rich dialogue, smart detailing and evocative descriptions make it easy to focus on the fun love story being told so well.
A human and humorous look at two headstrong characters battling the challenges that come with falling in love.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-615-88050-1
Page Count: 462
Publisher: Katherine Lowry Logan
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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