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Waiting for Paint to Dry

Uplifting chick lit full of heart and hope and featuring an appealing heroine and trauma survivor.

Awards & Accolades

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Raped as a teen, a woman finds romance, a new art career, and new connections to family in this debut women’s fiction novel.

Matty Bell recalls jogging on a California beach with her often absent Navy father. It was the morning of sister Eleanor’s wedding and also Matty’s birthday; as a gift, Matty was given a truck to drive to art school in San Diego. Instead, she bolted for Baltimore, joining friend Claire, after Matty’s boozy mother dismissed Matty’s revelation of being repeatedly raped at 16 by her young boyfriend, Jett. “She”— Eleanor—“said you’d do it,” Jett had told Matty before raping her. Matty is now 30 and living in Baltimore, and Claire, married with kids, is moving to Germany. Matty realizes she must fully face her past. She discusses her trauma in therapy, contacts authorities to file charges against an elusive Jett, and flies to California to confront Eleanor. On the plane, Matty meets handsome widowed dad/restaurateur Ty. Eleanor leaves for a planned getaway with her husband, so Matty spends time alone, painting room murals. She also begins a relationship with Ty. When Eleanor returns, Matty learns more about her sister’s past and current issues, then revels in her own new life. Two years later, still in California, “I found myself, I found my family. I found love,” Matty says. This isn’t a book only about ugliness and trauma. “On the contrary,” Mack writes, “it focuses on the healing aspects one must go through to find peace and light at the end of the trauma tunnel.” Indeed, Mack’s novel is an enjoyable tale that transforms ugly duckling Matty—initially in self-imposed exile complete with drab clothing—into a swan. Readers will root for sympathetic, wryly charming Matty even as her trauma somewhat surprisingly ebbs into the background. Reconciliation with her dysfunctional family is a bit too pat, and her meeting another Jett victim and Jett’s unknown whereabouts are worrisome loose threads that Mack will perhaps address in a future book.

Uplifting chick lit full of heart and hope and featuring an appealing heroine and trauma survivor.

Pub Date: May 20, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-942428-37-4

Page Count: 340

Publisher: Pen-L Publishing

Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015

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MAGIC HOUR

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

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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