Erotica fans may be disappointed by this thinly plotted bodice ripper.
Sex and drugs—mostly sex—overpower a young fashion model’s luxurious lifestyle in this graphic tale of desire.
Katie Wolfer, a 24-year-old supermodel, abruptly flees a runway show in Paris when she receives the news that her mother has committed suicide. All that’s left of her family is her wealthy stepfather, Daniel, and her two stepsiblings. Returning to New York, she takes up residence with Daniel and his children in their extravagant Hamptons home. Hungry for pleasure, Katie shirks off mourning her mother in favor of her own libido, and she engages sexually with everyone from the handsome man beside her on her flight from Paris, to her stepsister, Caroline, to a pair of young peeping Toms in the Hamptons. Finding her life in flux, she pushes forward in pursuit of sex, flirting dangerously with how sexual prowess shapes her identity as a young woman. No erotic stone goes unturned in her escapades: Katie finds herself in situations ranging from sex in public to group sex to bondage. However, the most troublesome of all her yearnings is what she feels for her stepfather, Daniel—would sleeping with him validate her new, open-minded quest for pleasure or condemn her as someone who’s crossed a disturbing line? The feverish addition of drugs, glamour and money leads Katie to a definitive answer in the novel’s final pages. Jumping on the Fifty Shades of Grey bandwagon, this novel is packed with more sex than plot, as each chapter centers on a titillating and explicit sex scene. The sexual encounters tend to offer more pornography than passion, with a preference for cringe-worthy metaphors, including everything from “water snake” to “lollipop.” Katie’s brush with near incest seems gratuitous as the book struggles to up the ante on each chapter’s over-the-top escapade. While Katie occasionally reflects on how her reckless behavior affects her identity, her character is otherwise flat; readers learn more about her favorite designer miniskirt than her emotional landscape. The story is hellbent on showing an outrageous lifestyle, but the result is more confused discomfort than a compelling narrative about sexual expression.
Erotica fans may be disappointed by this thinly plotted bodice ripper.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 163
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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