A sweet if occasionally silly adventure.
When a feisty but sheltered heiress and a stifled Englishman team up on an epic around-the-world race, it gets more than just their motors running.
Paulina Rostakova has lived under her father's firm but benevolent thumb for almost 30 years after an attempted kidnapping when she was 6. Paulie loves her dad but is frustrated by his interference in her life. When her stepmother suggests she take part in a reality show inspired by The Great Race, Paulie is excited about embarking on an adventure worthy of her hero, Nellie Bly. It's a chance for freedom as well as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dress up in period clothes and drive a vintage car. Meanwhile, Dixon Ainslie has been withering away managing his brother's estate and recovering from the death of his fiancee. An adventure might be just the thing to help him put his life into high gear. Dixon and Paulie are both awkward, and their meet-cute is painfully so. But after being thrown together by circumstance, their attraction is clear. Once the race is underway, they begin secretly hooking up off camera. Unfortunately, a rival team is picking off contestants one by one. After their teammates are sidelined, the producers ask Dixon and Paulie to pretend to be in love and get married in order to keep the competition on track. A series of high jinks ensue, and the two encounter a hitchhiking Star Wars stormtrooper, a torrential downpour, a brief kidnapping by the worst thugs ever, and more. The sex is there, though it’s a little flat. If that's a deterrent for some readers, they may be won back by the zany antics and funny dialogue. The shifting perspectives—the novel is told through journal entries and text conversations (with hilarious autocorrects)—add new and refreshing elements to the story as well.
A sweet if occasionally silly adventure.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-99068-1
Page Count: 326
Publisher: Berkley Sensation
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
You’ll need your own detective’s notebook to keep tabs on all the characters and connections on display here. Even so,...
A tenacious reporter won’t let personal ties to a decades-old case stop her from finding the truth.
On the advice of her agent, Savannah Sentinel reporter and author Nikki Gillette is looking for fodder for her latest true-crime novel when she realizes that the perfect subject is about to be released from prison. Savannah’s notorious Blondell O’Henry has been locked up for some 20 years for the murder of her oldest daughter and Nikki’s childhood friend, Amity. Now that Blondell’s son Niall has recanted the testimony that put her away all those years ago, it looks as if she’ll be a free woman unless Nikki’s fiance, Detective Pierce Reed, can find a reason to keep her detained. Pierce and Nikki both work to discover what happened years ago at that cabin in the woods, though Pierce bridles at Nikki’s rather unconventional—all right, illegal—research methods. It seems to Nikki that the more she investigates, the more connections she discovers to her own family, beginning with the fact that her Uncle Alex was the original defense attorney on the case. But all of these uncomfortable connections make Nikki still more determined to learn the truth, even if she doesn’t like what that may mean.
You’ll need your own detective’s notebook to keep tabs on all the characters and connections on display here. Even so, Jackson (You Don’t Want to Know, 2012, etc.) shows a mastery of the true-crime thriller formula that will please fans.Pub Date: June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7582-5858-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
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