A good beach read, with enough to discuss for a book club looking for lighter fare.
Jilted the night before her wedding, Kate learns her fiance, Max, is in love with her co-worker and close friend, Courtney, and wishes she had seen the signs in time.
Liam and Jules have been Kate’s best friends since college, and they stand by her after her aborted wedding. Jittery and confused, Kate can’t resist checking her Facebook page, where dozens of congratulatory messages await her. She posts in her status, “I wish I could do the past month over.” When she wakes up the next morning, it’s a month earlier, Max is still with her, and she realizes she’s been given the power to wish for whatever she wants. Can she keep Max and Courtney from falling for each other? Can she also help Jules, whose long marriage has grown stale, and Liam, who has bounced from girlfriend to girlfriend, none of them quite right? Can she help her mother let go of her bitterness over her parents’ long-ago divorce? As she tries to ensure Max will be hers forever and those she loves will be happy, Kate begins to realize that nothing is really perfect and that life is ultimately beyond her control, even when she knows how things might turn out ahead of time. Fenton and Steinke (Your Perfect Life, 2014, etc.) veer into typecasting with some of the minor characters, such as Kate and Courtney’s superskinny, fashion-forward, demanding boss and Liam’s starlet girlfriend fresh from rehab and primed for a new scandal. The lessons Kate learns are nothing new, either. But the friendships at the heart of the story are realistic, the descriptions of affluent Southern California are deliciously escapist, and the be-careful-what-you-wish-for message is not overbearing.
A good beach read, with enough to discuss for a book club looking for lighter fare.Pub Date: June 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-6341-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Starts out promising but never quite gets out of first gear.
A laconic auto-body shop owner hopes to woo a longtime crush, but he has to overcome his past trauma to convince her they belong together.
Rena Jackson has started her own hair salon in Seattle and wants her personal life to rev up, too, but she has almost given up on Axel Heller’s making a move. Though she finds the German transplant attractive, she worries that he is commitment-phobic and not ready for true intimacy. With both their upbringings shadowing them (his involves domestic violence and hers a single mother who has looked for love too often), can two strong, wary people become vulnerable to love? Harte (Delivered With a Kiss, 2019, etc.) provides readers with passages about Axel’s painful memories and his fear of being a physical threat to a woman. This is a useful counter to some novels’ tendency to romanticize the threat of male power. But the limited, alternating perspective leaves Rena in the dark for much longer than the reader, with the result that her complaints about Axel’s attachment style edge her into unlikable territory. The novel is threaded together by Axel's awkward (albeit funny) attempts to court Rena with gifts and other gestures but doesn't allow her similar space to show her personality and get us to root for the couple. The quick references to, and scenes with, numerous peripheral characters bog down the romance arc further. The handling of the white supremacists who have been threatening Rena, who's African American, is a broad-stroke attempt to acknowledge racism but lacks nuance, as does a scene involving homophobia. While the novel’s title and cover allude to recent successes like The Kiss Quotient and The Hating Game, it lacks the former’s thematic firm-footedness and the latter’s tonal mastery of comedy and emotion.
Starts out promising but never quite gets out of first gear.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4926-9698-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
The heartfelt soap appears to be Hannah’s chosen romance niche, and she mines it skillfully. (First printing of 125,000)
Hannah’s sequel to On Mystic Lake (1999) is yet another tear-jerker set in northwest Washington State.
Perfect mother Mikaela (“Mike”) Campbell takes a hard fall off a horse, hits her head, and sinks into a coma. In order to help bring her out of it, perfect husband-doctor Liam sits at her bedside and begins to talk to her about their life together. He brings her favorite music, scented potpourri, and, to place across her inert body, sweaters that may smell like home. He also tries to keep life as normal as possible for their two kids: Bret, nine years old, and Jacey, Mike’s teenaged daughter by her previous husband. Going through Mike’s closet to find a prom dress for Jacey, Liam stumbles on souvenirs of her first marriage and a picture of her ex—not just any old, anonymous first husband, but Julian True, a gorgeous superstar actor, the hero of women’s fantasies all over America. Liam has always known that he got Mikaela on the rebound; she was honest about the fact that he was not the love of her life. But she is the love of his life, and when she doesn't respond to the sound of his voice, he contacts Julian in hopes that the actor can save Mikaela. Julian travels up to Last Bend, a cutesy town founded by Liam’s larger-than-life father and filled with homey shops like the Emperor’s New Clothes store and Zeke’s Feed and Seed. When Mike finally comes out of unconsciousness and into her family’s emotional upheaval, she apologizes to Liam and bids goodbye to Julian. Yes, she’s discovered that it’s that gentle guy who stays with you through years of cramps and decorating the Christmas tree who defines what love really is.
The heartfelt soap appears to be Hannah’s chosen romance niche, and she mines it skillfully. (First printing of 125,000)Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-609-60592-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
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