A lighthearted work with well-drawn characters and genuine laughs.
In Knight’s comic debut novel, a relationship expert turns to dog-training strategies in order to domesticate her incorrigible boyfriend and save her flagging career.
Nancy is a psychologist and relationship specialist who hosts a radio talk show in West Palm Beach. After two failed engagements, she’s taken herself off the dating market. Unfortunately for her, this means no one is much interested in her advice. Her listenership is evaporating, and she’s been forced to move in with her sister and her sister’s bodybuilding girlfriend. Jacob is a recovering Wall Street software programmer undergoing a crisis of purpose. He works at a customer-service call center and lives in his brother’s guesthouse with a Yoko Ono–inspired blowup doll. After Nancy and Jacob meet on a blind date, their harried siblings prematurely encourage them to move into a place of their own. Their personalities clash, and the situation isn’t improved by the introduction of a poorly trained German shepherd to the household. The dog does give Nancy an idea, however. To increase her audience and save her relationship, she begins using canine training tactics on Jacob and then describing them on her radio show. Though initially effective, man proves to be a surprisingly complex animal, and Nancy’s inspired idea leads to complications that threaten to ruin her love life and livelihood. The book is funny in the best way: the humor propels the action rather than pausing it. Though Knight sometimes lacks subtlety when it comes to characterization (new characters’ ages, occupations, and ethnicities are rattled off as soon as they enter a scene), and the dialogue is sometimes overly expositional, the authorial hand is mostly well-hidden, and the prose flows like a jocular babbling brook. More impressively, the central characters transcend their stock roles and grow into legitimately compelling subjects. Incident by unlikely incident, we are pulled deeper into their lives until it is their fates (not merely their quips) that keep us turning the pages. Knight is a naturally comic writer; what is more, she is a talented storyteller.
A lighthearted work with well-drawn characters and genuine laughs.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1630760175
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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