LIVING THE DREAM

Name: LIVING THE DREAM
Author: Lauren Berry
ISBN: 978-1-250-12690-0

by Lauren Berry ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2017

Debut novelist Berry creates relatable characters who can laugh at themselves even when they fall down hard, but the gist of...

bookshelf

Best friends, both creatives, keep their wine glasses at the ready as they try to make it big without selling their souls.

Emma Derringer considers herself a writer, validated by her blog's steadily growing number of followers. But her daily life belongs mostly to “her alter ego: someone who worked in advertising and meant it.” Working at APRC is mind-numbing, but it’s supposed to be temporary. Emma’s best friend, Clementine, could never survive at an office job even though she has zero money. Recently back from a year studying screenwriting at Columbia, Clem expected to return to London on the verge of success. Instead, she has a jerk of an actor ex-boyfriend whose name is already plastered on billboards, making her feel that much worse about working nights at her old college bar. Now that these friends are in the same city again, they can at least drink away their problems together—complaining about exes and bosses from hell is a lot easier than figuring out how to make their dreams reality. In contrast to Emma and Clem with their Debbie-downer attitudes, there is Emma’s DJ roommate, Paul, who's equal parts hot mess and accomplished in his career, and Yasmin, Emma’s frenemy, who seems predictably airheaded at the start but may just be the happiest of the lot. But when Emma’s blogworthy items go from sexy encounters and wasted nights to health scares and questions of moral integrity, the tension starts to bubble over. What more will it take to get Emma and Clem to become people they actually like? Berry sustains a witty voice with an enjoyable flair for the dramatic throughout, but the actual drama of the story falls flat. The seeds are planted, fiddled with, but then dropped—many of the women's problems are solved without them having to work very hard at it.

Debut novelist Berry creates relatable characters who can laugh at themselves even when they fall down hard, but the gist of the book can be summed up when one of them approaches a problem by “produc[ing] a piece of writing about it and put[ting] it all behind her.”

Pub Date: July 11, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-250-12690-0

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 1, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

bookshelf

Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

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.