Good-natured fluff.
Fforde (Restoring Grace, 2006, etc.) presents a chatty, feel-good romance filled with antiques and numerous cups of tea to get her gang of Brits through the tribulations of modern love.
Young, slightly flighty Flora Stanza has just inherited 51 percent of Stanza and Stanza, a country auction house. She sublets her London flat, packs up a few summer dresses and cages the very pregnant cat Imelda for a sojourn in the country. She’s not sure for how long, or for exactly what, but . . . why not? The stiff Charles, Flora’s very distant cousin, and his equally patrician fiancée, Annabelle, run the business, and they rudely tell Flora to head back to London. But our spunky heroine decides to stick around and learn the antiques trade (building on admittedly spotty knowledge gleaned from the telly), if for no other reason than to spite them. Kindly old Geoffrey, a porter at the company, takes Flora under his wing, and soon her London marketing savvy has multiplied the company’s revenues. She dines out with Henry, the town Lothario, and befriends the slightly odd William, a poet/painter/naked-tai-chi enthusiast who pops into her cottage from time to time to bake a quiche. Flora even smoothes things out with Annabelle, giving her a Trinny-and-Susannah–style makeover and arranging for William to paint her engagement portrait. Everything would be perfect but for the nagging uneasiness Flora feels when around Charles. All the signs are there: She’s in love! But what to do? Charles and Annabelle have been together forever, and the wedding is in just a few months. How can Flora stay with the company when Charles doesn’t reciprocate her love? It’s not exactly a surprise when things work out beautifully, but Fforde moves the plot along at breakneck speed, with enough charm to entertain the most discerning fans.
Good-natured fluff.Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-312-35963-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2007
An effective infomercial—and guest-room sleep-aid—for Inn BoonsBoro.
In Roberts’ new series launch, the conversion of a tumbledown Maryland hotel into a boutique country inn fails to expel an extremely shy resident ghost.
The first half of the novel, essentially an extended prologue, is painstakingly slow. As Roberts demonstrates a newfound passion for construction minutia (perhaps because she renovated and owns Inn Boonsboro in real life), the activities of architect Beckett Montgomery and his two builder brothers as they retrofit a historic building in Boonsboro (near the Antietam battlefield) unfold almost in real time. Working under the supervision of their benevolent tyrant of a mother, the brothers exchange good-natured macho gibes as they appoint the Inn-to-be with the most opulent tile, woodwork and fixtures. Amid all the bromance, Beckett watches longingly as his crush since grade school, Clare, goes about running her amazingly profitable independent bookstore while raising three unruly boys alone. (Her soldier husband died in Iraq.) Does she or doesn’t she notice him, Beckett muses ad infinitum. Meanwhile, Clare tells herself that Beckett is not really interested, just being kind to a war widow. Once this minor miscommunication is cleared up, the two begin a tentative relationship, however, the necessity of introducing obstacles to true love has Roberts stretching for things for them to squabble about, including the sighting by Clare’s youngest son of a ghostly lady dressed in an old-timey long gown, staring from an upper story window of the Inn. (The ghost, nicknamed “Lizzy,” has betrayed her presence to Beckett and a few others only with a scent of honeysuckle and a penchant for opening doors.) Cartoonish villain Sam, the spoiled, indolent son of the area’s wealthiest family, stalks Clare and tries to take indecent liberties, but his belated appearance, and his failure to pose a believable threat, do little to propel the plot. The fictional doppelganger of Boonsboro is an anachronistic bubble, seemingly untouched by the blight besetting so many American small towns.
An effective infomercial—and guest-room sleep-aid—for Inn BoonsBoro.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-425-24321-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
Reid’s tome on married life is as uplifting as it is brutally honest—a must-read for anyone who is in (or hopes to be in) a...
An unhappily married couple spends a year apart in Reid’s (Forever, Interrupted, 2013) novel about second chances.
When we meet Lauren, she and her husband, Ryan, are having a meltdown trying to find their car in the parking lot at Dodger Stadium after a game. Through a series of flashbacks, Lauren reveals how the two of them went from being inseparable to being insufferable in each other’s eyes—and in desperate need of a break. Both their courtship and their fights seem so ordinary—they met in college; he doesn’t like Greek food—that the most heartbreaking part of their pending separation is deciding who will get custody of their good-natured dog. It’s not until Ryan moves out that the juicy details emerge. Lauren surreptitiously logs into his email one day, in a fit of missing him, and discovers a bunch of emails to her that he had saved but not sent. Liberated by Ryan’s candor, Lauren saves her replies for him to find, and the two of them read each other’s unfiltered thoughts as they go about their separate lives. Neither character holds anything back, which makes the healing process more complex, and more compelling, than simply getting revenge or getting one’s groove back. Meanwhile, as Lauren spends more time with her family and friends, she explores the example set for her by her parents and learns that there are many ways to be happy. It’s never clear until the final pages whether living alone will bring Lauren and Ryan back together or force them apart forever. But when the year is up, the resolution is neither sappy nor cynical; it’s arrived at after an honest assessment of what each partner can’t live with and can’t live without.
Reid’s tome on married life is as uplifting as it is brutally honest—a must-read for anyone who is in (or hopes to be in) a committed relationship.Pub Date: July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1284-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
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