You’ll breeze through this one like you would a Saturday spin class with the most fabulous playlist and the promise of...
Unofficial rule of the New York fashion industry: if you must buy the bruffin, you absolutely cannot be seen eating said bruffin.
Janey Sweet, co-founder of a wedding-dress company called B, doesn’t realize she’s committing a crime until B designer and her best friend, Beau, shoves a tabloid with a picture of her eating a bruffin ("the love child of a brioche and a muffin") in her face and ends their breakfast conversation by calling her the “f” word—fat—which is unacceptable according to their business arrangement formed decades ago. Since B wedding dresses are notorious for not going above a size 4, Janey is out until she drops her bruffin habit and 30 pounds along with it. No joke. It doesn’t matter that she’s lost both of her parents within a year or that she’s going through a divorce. To Beau, being skinny is the only thing that matters. With the same delicious brand of satire that Sykes and Piazza became known for in The Knockoff (2015), Janey falls down the rabbit hole of fitness trends, skinny mommy blogs, and juice cleanses in search of a weight-loss savior. If you think naked yoga isn’t real, Google it. If you don’t think you can laugh at scenarios involving psychedelic cactus and an exclusive healing ceremony in Brooklyn, then you won’t appreciate this book’s particular flavor of excess. The journey to skinny is livened up by a memorable supporting cast: there’s CJ, Janey’s college friend who is levelheaded about everything besides her weight (in that respect, she’s a maniac); Jacob, a superattractive, dumpster-diving single dad; and Ivy, Janey’s younger cousin, a former ballerina–turned–SoarBarre instructor with the mouth of a sailor. The journey culminates with Janey becoming a follower of “The Workout,” the latest craze promising to have you 15 pounds lighter, as long as you’re able to pay the exorbitant price associated with a retreat to St. Lucia. Though it’s hard to sympathize with someone who can afford to have healthy meals catered on a daily basis, this novel is about indulging in the ridiculous. You’ll have to overlook details like sporadic point-of-view changes and the fact that St. Lucia is not actually a Spanish-speaking country on the path to finding your inner “warrior queen.”
You’ll breeze through this one like you would a Saturday spin class with the most fabulous playlist and the promise of brunch cocktails after.Pub Date: July 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-54180-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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