In Strickland’s novel, one person’s messiah is another’s juvenile delinquent.
Annie Mullard had it all—a great job as an airline pilot, a handsome and successful husband, three beautiful children and a big house in Chicago. When the recession hits, Annie loses her job and the comfortable life she has known begins to collapse; her husband is cheating on her, her kids don’t like her and the family’s financial situation is so tight that she has to wheel her clothing down to the Golden Coin Laundromat when the washing machine breaks. Annie is fed up, frustrated and seriously depressed. Although she prays for help, the sudden appearance of Violet at the Laundromat is not what she had in mind. Violet looks like a goth teenager and claims to be a messiah who can help Annie change her life though the power of positive thinking. Yet Annie is full of doubts, expressing understandable incredulity at Violet’s claims and scoffing at the idea that she can simply choose to be happy. Annie is a challenging case, and Violet spends nearly 23 chapters (set almost exclusively within the walls of the dingy Laundromat) trying to convince Annie that changing her thoughts and her attitude is the key to changing her life. As a teaching method, and further proof that she just may be a messiah, Violet beams Annie into past lives and even a possible future, forcing Annie to truly reflect on her attitude and her choices thus far. Slowly, Annie realizes that she just might possess the power to will her way to happiness. Strickland, in her second novel, effectively combines the earnestness of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life with the didactic voice of The Secret. With its timely, relatable story peppered liberally with pop-culture references and religious conviction, Strickland’s novel should strike a chord with readers who will relate to Annie’s struggles and search for a happier future. A lesson in faith and the power of positive thinking, all nestled within a satisfying story.
Pub Date: March 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-0981979458
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Kim Strickland-Sargent
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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