An engaging, emotionally resonant story of resurfacing after deep grief.
In Granata’s romance, the aftermath of a devastating accident unites two longtime acquaintances struggling with loss.
Life was never easy for Merritt Adams. Her mother abandoned the family without a word of explanation, leaving her to care for her despondent father. He later struggled with mental illness for several years until he took his life. The night of her father’s funeral, Merritt gets drunk and crashes her car, and the intervention of a stranger saves her from a fiery death. Unable to continue her studies while she recovers from her injuries, Merritt drops out of college and moves in with her best friend, Shelly. The last person she expects to offer help is Chase Brooks. Merritt and Shelly grew up with Chase, and after high school, he left Staten Island to pursue a music career in California. Two years later, he’s back to help his family and his terminally ill father. A friendship develops between the gregarious Chase and the more reserved Merritt, and his family warmly welcomes her. As their relationship turns romantic, Chase’s family experiences a crisis that threatens to expose a secret about the night of Merritt’s accident. Granata’s debut is a sensitive, finely observed study of heartache and the ability of love to heal trauma. While the subject is serious, the pace doesn’t dawdle in this well-developed, believable romance. And the mystery surrounding Merritt’s mother’s decision to abandon her family emerges as an intriguing subplot and fodder for a sequel. While Granata’s storytelling is solid, the narrative could use additional editing (X-Men character Jean Grey is referred to as “Gene Grey”).
An engaging, emotionally resonant story of resurfacing after deep grief.Pub Date: March 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-980590-42-2
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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