Higgins’ astute, perceptive eye to the best and worst of human nature enhances the poignancy of a sensitive topic, which she...
Two friends who have fought weight issues their whole lives must decide how to move forward when another friend dies after reminding them of a list of "someday" tasks they created as teens to help them appreciate their lives.
Georgia, Marley, and Emerson met as girls at Camp Copperbrook—a summer camp where they were sent to lose weight—and have remained friends since. When Emerson summons Marley and Georgia, they are stunned to learn she is morbidly obese and dying of a variety of ailments, including a blood clot in her lungs. "Why hadn't she told us? I knew the answer: shame." With her last breaths, Emerson hands them an envelope which contains a list of “Things We’ll Do When We’re Skinny” that they created at camp years ago. The two friends agree to follow the list. Obviously, Emerson’s goal for Marley and Georgia is to build lives that make them happy, since their unhealthy obsession with being physically smaller has diminished them emotionally. Georgia, who’s left a law practice to become a nursery school teacher, must re-evaluate difficult family relationships and try to keep her beloved and emotionally vulnerable nephew safe while revisiting the end of her marriage. Marley’s unresolved issues include a twin who died very young and the man she’s been involved with for five years, who treats her like a booty call. Higgins explores a very complicated emotional landscape through the lens of three friends who’ve endured society’s hateful attitude toward heavy people. Emerson, the largest and most besieged, tells her point of view through diary entries leading up to her death. The ending is uplifting, but the book may be a difficult read for women who routinely live through such judgment and hostility.
Higgins’ astute, perceptive eye to the best and worst of human nature enhances the poignancy of a sensitive topic, which she navigates with humor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-451-48939-5
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Well-written women’s weepie from the author of many, now with her first hardcover.
Blindness, babies, bathos.
When photojournalist Jessie Ryder finds that she’s losing her sight to a rare retinal disease, it’s time to take stock—and, at last, meet the child she gave away years before. She rails against her cruel fate as she leaves New Zealand for the Texas town where she grew up. After all, she’d stayed away, kept her distance—and kept her side of the bargain she made with God. She’d provided the best possible home for her newborn by handing her over to her sister Luz and her husband Ian. Even now that she’s a teenager, Lila has no idea that she was adopted (and there’s another thing even Luz doesn’t know). Lila escapes serious injury during a joyriding car accident that shakes the family out of its complacency and forces them to grapple with the Big Questions. Why does Ian, a Death Row lawyer, always have time for his clients but not for his family? Must Luz always shoulder most of the burden of raising the kids and running the house? Luz pines for what she perceives as her sister’s freedom, but Jessie, of course, isn’t really free. She’s always been haunted by what she never told Luz: Lila is the product of a long-ago, whirlwind affair with Ian. Her vision dimming day by day, Jessie wonders whether she’ll ever find happiness. There’s hunky rancher Dusty Matlock, father of an adorable toddler, still fending off media attention ever since his pregnant wife, comatose after a stroke, gave birth by Cesarean and expired a couple of years ago. Should Jessie give in to Blair LaBorde, tabloid reporter, and photograph Dusty? Perhaps. But will Jessie even admit that she’s losing her sight? Yes, once she shares her story yet again at the world-famous center for the blind not far away.
Well-written women’s weepie from the author of many, now with her first hardcover.Pub Date: April 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-55166-673-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A satisfying treat, with extra scoops of excitement and romance that make up for certain lapses in credibility.
Once-in-a-lifetime romantic passion and graphically depicted torture sessions are only the two extremes of this lively time-travel romance set in 18th-century Scotland—an imaginative and lighthearted debut by a promising newcomer.
World War II has finally ended and Claire Beauchamp Randall, a British Red Cross nurse, has gone off to Scotland with her historian husband, Frank, to try to resume their married life where it left off six years before. Their diligent attempts to make a baby come to a halt, however, when Claire discovers an ancient stone circle on a nearby hilltop, slips between two mysterious-looking boulders, and is transported willy-nilly to the year 1743. Stumbling down the hillside, disoriented and confused, Claire is discovered by Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall, an evil English officer who happens to be her husband's direct ancestor and physical look-alike. Randall notes Claire's revealing 1940's summer dress, assumes she is a whore, and attempts to rape her, whereupon she is rescued by the fierce MacKenzie clan, who take her to their castle and confine her there. Claire adjusts to her changed circumstances with amazing ease, using her nursing experience to tend to her hosts' illnesses while she impatiently awaits a chance to return to the circle of stones. Before she can get away, circumstances force her into a marriage with James Frazer, a Scottish renegade from English justice and Jonathan Randall's archenemy. Young Jamie's good looks, passion, and virility soon redirect Claire's energies to defending her stalwart new husband against her former mate's evil clone, and the fierce, courageous but historically doomed Scottish clans against the course of destiny itself.
A satisfying treat, with extra scoops of excitement and romance that make up for certain lapses in credibility.Pub Date: July 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-385-30230-4
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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