A diverting, lightweight romance.
Two disparate men vie for the affections of a beautiful, hardworking woman in Jarrett’s debut.
Most of her life, Jesse Tanner has loved Chris Kennedy, but he married someone else. Years later, Jesse takes over a broken-down marina in Montauk, Long Island, working 60-70 hours a week to make it shipshape for the grand reopening. Now divorced, Chris is devastated by the split and determined to never “go that route again.” A captain in the Marine Patrol, he assists the Coast Guard with rescues, and with all that fresh sea air and sun, he’s never looked better. One night, fueled by alcohol, the pair gives in to lust, half-naked among the lobster pots on a deserted dock, and Jesse declares her love. The morning after finds Jesse confessing that she drank too much and isn’t interested in Chris—lies, of course—and then a handsome Wall Street attorney arrives at the marina to reserve a Jet Ski. Polished and moneyed, Jeffrey Wilder has recently bought and renovated the legendary DiPinto place (soon to be profiled in Architectural Digest), and he’s in the market for a local honey. Jeff extravagantly woos Jesse and, on the town, the two often encounter Chris, who wonders if he might be in love with Jesse after all. It’s intelligence, wealth and the Gucci loafers of a Manhattan lawyer versus muscle, guts and the docksiders of a Montauk fisherman. Jesse’s mother, who can’t abide Chris, is rooting for Jeff while urging her daughter, to the point of manipulation, to return to her former swank job on Madison Ave. The book hits the ground running, with Jesse and Chris in the throes of passion, and then ratchets up the sexual tension with both becoming unwilling or unable to voice their feelings, and features about as much exploration of character as might be found in a typical rom-com. One nice touch is Jesse’s longtime English gal-pal, Susannah, who’s bright and funny, with her own set of man troubles—and, best of all, actually sounds like a Brit. The story is well paced, with a little adventure and real-life Montauk history thrown in, and an ending that neither surprises nor disappoints.
A diverting, lightweight romance.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2010
ISBN: 978-0557538041
Page Count: 162
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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