Chica lit that boasts strong narration but is hampered by some lackluster plotting.
Nieves-Powell, a writer, director and producer whose credits include the off-Broadway show Yo Soy Latina!, makes her fiction debut with this novel about a 30-something Latina mom looking for her true self amid the demands of work and family.
Idalis and her best-friend-since-childhood Selenis love to recall the great nights of their youth, spent salsa dancing at Club 90 in the Bronx. Dressed in stretch pants and bolero jackets, they ruled the dance floor. Now, 15 years later, they are mothers in Staten Island, dissatisfied with their husbands and their lives. Idalis, a secretary for a Manhattan ad agency, is legally separated from Manny. She loves him and his sexy ways, but his machismo—refusing to help with child care or housework—has made her doubt their marriage. Selenis, mother of three and caretaker of her increasingly demented mother, discovers that her husband is addicted to Internet porn. The women begin to despair. Then Idalis’s agency promotes her (her first task is working on a new Latino account) and she meets a handsome African-American banker. Could things be looking up? Not so fast. Idalis soon realizes that she is trading one set of problems for another. Her new beau has a bad habit of not calling when he says he will, and the Latino client wants the agency to market a Latina doll that is sure to tank. Should Idalis tell the client the truth about his product or should she keep her mouth shut to secure her promotion? This contrived plot point combines with other equally staged scenes (Manny’s oversexed barely legal girlfriend and Idalis’s boss’s preposterous lecture on reverse racism) to dampen what is the novel’s strength: its vibrant first-person narration, which really sings, as in the scene in which the girlfriends have a reunion night at Club 90, where they find a posse of old friends…and realize that things have changed.
Chica lit that boasts strong narration but is hampered by some lackluster plotting.Pub Date: March 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4165-4281-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2008
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
