Despite occasional flashes of wit, a standard romance tale with a predictable outcome.
A timid, unemployed British bookseller has her horizons expanded by an encounter with an irascible Irish author.
Laura, a 27-year-old virgin whose independent bookstore is the latest casualty of the chains, is jolted from her quarter-life doldrums by London agent Eleanora, who taps Laura to organize a literary festival for Eleanora’s niece, Fenella. “Fen” needs a revenue stream to keep her stately home in the English countryside, and an annual lit fest featuring prominent authors seems just the ticket, provided she can procure a buzz-magnet like reclusive Irish scribe Dermot Flynn to headline. Dermot produced two iconic books in his youth, but nothing else in 15 years. Laura is charged with convincing Dermot to leave the shelter of his tiny Irish village, Ballyfitzpatrick. After one too many whiskeys in Dermot’s favorite pub, she succumbs to his blarney. Dermot, to his credit, refrains from deflowering the semi-comatose Laura, but he does agree to appear at the festival. However, when the envious snipings of a blogger tip Dermot back over the edge, Laura is once more dispatched to Ireland to do triage. She finds Dermot passed out cold amid weeks of dirty laundry and unwashed dishes, and despite all her feminist better instincts, which we’ve yet to see any real sign of anyhow, she cleans up after him and feeds him. After an overheated session of sober but ecstatic lovemaking, Laura’s a virgin no more, but her brief idyll is shattered when, out grocery shopping for ravenous Dermot, she’s confronted by a girlfriend she didn’t know he had. There follow several more pages of cat and mouse between Laura and Dermot as he tries to explain and she artfully dodges. The approach and avoidance game—Will Dermot show up at the festival? Will Laura return his texts and voicemails? Is Dermot simply in need of a muse like Laura to cure his writer’s block?—soon palls.
Despite occasional flashes of wit, a standard romance tale with a predictable outcome.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-67453-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2010
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal...
A gumbo seasoned with ghosts, love, and murder on the bayou.
When 30-something Declan Fitzgerald of Boston, a successful lawyer and a member of a large and loving family, breaks off his engagement to very suitable Jessica, he knows he needs to change his life. Lawyering is not fun anymore, so, recalling Manet Hall, an old deserted plantation house he once visited with law school classmate and New Orleans native Remy, he buys the property and moves down south. Declan is also a gifted craftsman, a born decorator, and very, very rich. Soon, he meets beautiful Lena, who’s visiting her grandmother Odette, Declan’s friendly Cajun neighbor. Declan is as certain that Lena is destined to be his wife as he was that Manet Hall would become his home. But, surprise, Lena has a troubled past (like the house) and is determined to resist Declan’s courtship. While he suits Lena and works on the place, Declan experiences troubling dreams. It seems he’s actually reliving the novel’s parallel story, which took place in 1899. In that year, the maid, Abbey Manet (from whom Lena, coincidentally, is descended, and who married wealthy Lucian Manet), was raped and murdered by her brother-in-law Julian as she nursed her baby daughter. Her body was dumped into the bayou by her mother-in-law, who despised her. And grief-stricken husband Lucian, away at the time, being told that Abbey had run off, committed suicide. Now, in an unconvincing twist of gender and reincarnation, it’s Declan who hears a baby crying , experiences childbirth and rape as the reincarnation of Abbey, while Lena is Lucian. The two accept all this with equanimity, and, Manet Hall’s secrets revealed, it becomes the setting for predictable and much foreshadowed resolutions.
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal fans will enjoy.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14824-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
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