Frequently sexual if not always sensual; those entranced by such a libertine setup will be eager to see how it all plays out.
From debut author Varga comes a dark romance novel about a reclusive investor and the two women who command his attention.
Gareth Renaut is the type of recluse wealthy enough to pursue his interests no matter the circumstances. It’s not that Gareth doesn’t interact with people—he’s aided by a dedicated assistant as well as a pet wolf named Wisdom—it’s that even those closest to him remain at a distance. As his longtime friend Louis says, “Nobody knows you, Gare.” When Louis drops by via helicopter to persuade Gareth to join him for a night on the town, Gareth is reluctant though ultimately compliant. Such compliance nets him not only a quickie with a voluptuous woman named Kitty—“She pushed harder into his groin, and he grabbed her thigh with one hand and her ass with the other”—but also an encounter with a one-armed girl of 19 whom Gareth decides to keep in a cage, at least for a little while. It is a lifestyle with which Gareth is familiar, though he apparently has not engaged in it for some time. “He hadn’t planned on jumping back into this game again. At least, not so soon,” readers are told. The girl, who calls herself Sky, may like “books and dogs,” but her motivation in life remains mysterious, particularly as she views her current situation with a large degree of nonchalance. As the perceptive reader might suspect, a love triangle of sorts develops among Gareth, Sky, and Kitty, but where exactly will it end? With his home gym—Gareth is, after all, “a glossy, muscular machine”—well-stocked library, and opaque past, Gareth is certainly a familiar, by now even dull, archetype. What keeps the book moving is the lingering question of his ultimate plans for these two women. When troubled histories are uncovered, there is certainly a lot to discuss between semiviolent sexual encounters. As Kitty explains to her roommate, “Sometimes he scares me in a fun way and then sometimes he’s just…too intense.”
Frequently sexual if not always sensual; those entranced by such a libertine setup will be eager to see how it all plays out.Pub Date: July 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9948159-1-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Brain Sugar Media
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
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