Insufficient copy editing and unconventional organization overshadow this story’s raw emotion.
Varela Tychsen (Spanish Angst, 2007) offers a harrowing tale of a one-sided love affair.
Cherie, the narrator of this story, has just started college, where she’s elated to escape her abusive, demeaning parents. She soon meets David, with whom she feels an instant connection, and the two become physically involved. However, his failure to acknowledge their relationship publicly is troubling to her. As time goes on, she has reason to doubt his commitment (and monogamy), until she’s ultimately forced to confront his indifference to her feelings. Along the way, she suffers emotional damage because of her attachment to him. The story also offers vignettes of other time periods in Cherie’s life, which describe other damaging incidents, often in great detail. In many ways, this book is a bold exercise that abandons some traditional writing conventions, such as straightforward chronology and chapter organization. The frequent spelling errors, however, detract from that experimental quality (“Sharon ought to wear a bag over her head because the site of her was nauseating”). Also, the author inserts strange, black-and-white images into the text at unpredictable intervals, which sometimes occupy several pages. The narrative moves back and forth between time periods with little cohesion, with the sole common thematic element being the narrator’s mistreatment and misfortune. Varela Tychsen’s cryptic disclaimer does little to explain the novel’s autobiographical tone, as she asserts that this is “a work of fiction….I just want to be clear that this is not an autobiography or a biography; though the stories in it are indeed true and it is wholly written from the heart.”
Insufficient copy editing and unconventional organization overshadow this story’s raw emotion.Pub Date: June 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5246-3634-0
Page Count: 226
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable...
An unlucky woman finally gets lucky in love on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii.
From getting her hand stuck in a claw machine at age 6 to losing her job, Olive Torres has never felt that luck was on her side. But her fortune changes when she scores a free vacation after her identical twin sister and new brother-in-law get food poisoning at their wedding buffet and are too sick to go on their honeymoon. The only catch is that she’ll have to share the honeymoon suite with her least favorite person—Ethan Thomas, the brother of the groom. To make matters worse, Olive’s new boss and Ethan’s ex-girlfriend show up in Hawaii, forcing them both to pretend to be newlyweds so they don’t blow their cover, as their all-inclusive vacation package is nontransferable and in her sister’s name. Plus, Ethan really wants to save face in front of his ex. The story is told almost exclusively from Olive’s point of view, filtering all communication through her cynical lens until Ethan can win her over (and finally have his say in the epilogue). To get to the happily-ever-after, Ethan doesn’t have to prove to Olive that he can be a better man, only that he was never the jerk she thought he was—for instance, when she thought he was judging her for eating cheese curds, maybe he was actually thinking of asking her out. Blending witty banter with healthy adult communication, the fake newlyweds have real chemistry as they talk it out over snorkeling trips, couples massages, and a few too many tropical drinks to get to the truth—that they’re crazy about each other.
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable as well as free.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2803-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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