A sizzling, sexy romance and a rewarding continuation of a family series.
Sparks fly when a star soccer player meets his team’s sponsorship manager in this fifth installment of a series.
As a top player for the LA Lords soccer team, Jace Connor is accustomed to a fast-paced lifestyle and plenty of attention from the media and adoring female fans. Love is the last thing on his mind until he meets Brooke Derringer, the team’s new sponsorship business development manager. Brooke needs a fresh start after weathering the breakup of a long-term relationship and leaving her job at a fashion magazine. She is excited about the position but nervous because the LA Lords’ coach is her father, Stephen. She wants to prove that she was hired for her business experience and not because of family connections. Jace is immediately attracted to Brooke, but she is wary of getting involved with him because she does not want to mix her personal and professional lives as she did at the magazine. While working with Jace on endorsement opportunities, Brooke discovers another side of him, one devoted to his family and community. Jace is determined to win Brooke’s heart, and their impromptu dinners and workout sessions at the gym blossom into a passionate romance. Jace and Brooke want a future together. But when Jace’s dispute with a jealous teammate spirals into a public relations nightmare, the couple must decide whether their love is worth fighting for. This installment of Hagen’s (Only With You, 2019, etc.) Connor Family series is a briskly paced and satisfying contemporary romance that builds on the author’s talent for creating endearing characters and heartfelt and deeply passionate love stories. Hagen sticks with the engaging narrative style found throughout the series. The lively and fast-moving chapters alternate between Jace’s and Brooke’s first-person perspectives. This technique allows the author to fully develop the characters and their motivations, particularly Brooke’s initial desire to establish personal and professional boundaries between her and Jace. Their romance develops at a gradual pace as they navigate the dynamics of a workplace relationship. While Jace and Brooke’s bond is the primary focus of the novel, a well-developed subplot involving the athlete’s teammate Levi provides the tension that leads to a crisis for the nascent couple. Fans of the series should also enjoy return appearances from members of the Connor family.
A sizzling, sexy romance and a rewarding continuation of a family series.Pub Date: June 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-09-972808-2
Page Count: 226
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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