Empty calories, presented cutely enough.
A family wedding forces a runaway fiancée to stick her toe back in the dating pool.
In this weightless debut, Emmy Everett emerges from seclusion—three years in Rhode Island working in a tackle shop—to return to Scarsdale for older brother Josh’s wedding to graceful Meryl. But Josh isn’t sure he wants to get married this weekend: He might be in love with Elizabeth, a holistic veterinarian with whom he has a connection (it was “like they were hearing the same song”). Urged on all sides to be supportive of her sibling during his crisis of indecision, Emmy can’t avoid contemplating the vacuum in her own love life. Mind you, that could easily be remedied, since suitors dog her every step. There’s Josh’s best friend, sexy chef Jaime; old local boyfriend Justin, although he now reveals himself to be gay; and above all ex-fiancé Matt, last seen sleeping in a motel room next to the abandoned engagement ring as Emmy slipped out the door with the knowledge that “she was losing him slowly anyway.” Dave milks the reliable wedding scenario set pieces, supplementing them with various comic characters, including Meryl’s birth parents, a pair of sociology professors never previously seen outside the Ozarks, and Emmy’s Jewish mother (“Eat just a little”). The book offers a kind of innocent yet worldly-wise charm via Emmy’s perky running commentary, but for every burst of invention, like the power outage that throws the doomed wedding off course, there’s a heaping portion of familiarity, especially in Matt’s prostration before Emmy (“I still have the engagement ring”) and her inevitable conjoining with an even more over-romanticized prospect.
Empty calories, presented cutely enough.Pub Date: May 22, 2006
ISBN: 0-670-03756-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2006
Romance, suspense, mystery, and bawdy historical customs add up to a fine read.
A couple with a reputation for crime-solving becomes involved in an odd murder case in 1832 Scotland.
Kiera Gage, better known as Lady Darby, and her husband, Sebastian Gage (An Artless Demise, 2019, etc.), are among the five dozen guests the Duke and Duchess of Bowmont have invited to Twelfth Night festivities at an immense Gothic castle in the Scottish border country. Kiera’s first marriage—the source of the title she'd rather not use—made her both miserable and notorious for executing anatomical drawings for her cruel husband, but she’s more recently gained a reputation as a portrait artist, and the Duchess is her client. Each guest at the ball is given a costume to wear and a role to play; amusingly, the heavily pregnant Kiera is a nun. Although the Duke claims all his children as his own, several of them were actually sired by other men. When his third son, Lord Edward, offers a ghost tour, the Gages are happy to escape the ballroom until the group stumbles upon a dead body in the dungeons. Ravaged by rats and decomposition, the corpse is difficult to identify, but its gentlemanly attire suggests that it may be Helmswick, the husband of the duke's daughter Lady Eleanor, who left for Paris a month ago. The ducal couple beg the Gages to investigate while withholding vital information. Lady Eleanor was unhappy with Helmswick, a man of many secrets and mistresses, and she’s commenced an affair with her first love, the Marquess of Marsdale. After the guests who were not at the castle when the murder occurred are permitted to depart, a disconcerting number of suspects remain behind. Kiera knows she’s touched a nerve when someone tries to push her down a flight of stairs. She and Gage must uncover many family secrets before they can unmask a killer.
Romance, suspense, mystery, and bawdy historical customs add up to a fine read.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-451-49138-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
This honest, mature look at life and love adds to a growing body of evidence leading to a decisive verdict: Ciment is an...
Two sequestered jurors on a tabloidworthy Florida murder trial tumble into an impassioned, illicit affair in this engaging, empathetic novel.
In a jury holding room, waiting to be called into the courtroom for a voir dire, two prospective jurors, identified for most of the book only as C-2 and F-17, begin a flirtation that rapidly grows into a full-blown love affair. C-2 is a 52-year-old female photographer of some renown. Having shot portraits for magazines like Rolling Stone and Interview early in her career, she eventually concluded she was interested in people not as individuals but as a species, and she turned her lens to other subjects, such as war and animals. C-2 is married to a much older man, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who is now 85. Their once-ardent relationship has evolved, and she is increasingly aware of the toll time is taking on their lives and bodies. Now, intensely attracted to F-17, a professor of anatomy in his early 40s with a pitted complexion, piercing blue eyes, and “beautiful feet,” C-2 finds herself hoping for “one last dalliance before she gets too old.” As the affair plays out against a backdrop of a gruesome, sad, and unsettling murder trial (a teenage girl stands accused of killing her toddler brother, but is the real culprit her twin sister?) and the shabby Econo Lodge accommodations and unappetizing luncheonette meals the court has arranged for the jurors during their sequestration, C-2, as both a lover and a juror, must weigh issues of guilt and innocence, loyalty and betrayal, life and death, passion and compassion. Ciment (Act of God, 2015, etc.) lays out the plot—part love story, part whodunit, part coming-of-old-age tale—with gentle sensitivity and straightforward intelligence, approaching complex emotions and conflicting loyalties as might a good juror: observing her characters’ behavior with an open mind and heart, an ability to consider context and varied perspectives, an appreciation for the evidence, and a notable lack of judgment.
This honest, mature look at life and love adds to a growing body of evidence leading to a decisive verdict: Ciment is an author well worth reading.Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4798-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
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