by Linda Graf ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 19, 2015
While a few topics can be dull, this tale adroitly portrays one woman’s complex journey.
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A debut novel focuses on a scientist and engineer’s look back on her own life.
When readers first meet Lauren Giulio, she is on a flight to Rome. Lauren is an American whose father was born in the small town of Panni, Italy. She knows little about his past, and due to the demands of her work, she has never had the time to do much investigating. She embarks on her current quest in order to “unravel the mystery around her father’s childhood” and perhaps learn more about herself. Upon arrival in Rome, Lauren hails a cab to Panni, though things feel amiss. The cab driver is strikingly like her father. The two men even have the same name. Of course, the driver cannot be Lauren’s father because he is dead. The coincidences are brushed aside so that the visiting American can connect with her cousin Gabriella. Lauren will tell Gabriella everything about her life over the past few decades. Lauren explains her struggles in college, how she eventually embarked on a career as a scientist and engineer, and how she learned that “in the business world, nothing remains static.” Amid all the details about professional ladder climbing, there are personal, often painful anecdotes. Lauren tells of her mother’s death. She explains how, just a few years after that heartbreak, she lost her husband, Peter. All in all, she has much to reveal and Gabriella has plenty of time to listen. (In an author’s note, Graf explains the novel’s title: “I can’t forget my niece Lauren and her daughter Caroline, for whom Auntie wrote this book.”) Although the protagonist certainly has a lot to say in the intriguing tale, events move quickly. At well under 300 pages, the work avoids unnecessary languishing. The death of Peter is, for instance, described with great anguish yet still summed up succinctly. Lauren reveals that at one point, the whites of Peter’s eyes “were such a bright yellow that they scared me.” Lauren’s career, on the other hand, while still explained with brevity, does not always make for such memorable reading. It is not entirely thrilling to learn the specifics of Lauren’s admission to the Tufts Graduate School of Engineering or how she had to clean out her desk at one company after her position was relocated and she quit. Likewise, flat statements such as “Lauren was accepted to the four colleges she applied to” and how at one job “the training was conducted both on-site and also at the customers’ locations” do not exactly ring with excitement. Late in the story, it is informative for readers to learn why Lauren decided to earn a business degree. But her assertion about how, with her employer footing most of the bill, she didn’t have to worry about “the cost of the eighteen courses required in the program” sounds more like an advertisement than the words of a real person. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, her experiences convey lessons learned. Through all of her triumphs and tragedies, Lauren has much to teach readers.
While a few topics can be dull, this tale adroitly portrays one woman’s complex journey.Pub Date: June 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4808-1938-2
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Nora Roberts ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 13, 1995
Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.
Pub Date: June 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14059-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2008
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
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