Overly reliant on mental soliloquy to drive the plot, but tender, heartfelt and ultimately affecting.
After she falls for a charming but disturbed man, a woman discovers clues that point to a past life.
Jessica and Daniel met through the personals section. Jessica, egged on by her dear friend Martha, placed the ad to help combat her loneliness–she's divorced, with two grown children–and to help deal with her uncertain future, as she's been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Though it's largely in remission, the disease could return in earnest at any time. The usually reserved Jessica forms an uncharacteristically strong bond with Daniel despite his occasional emotional outbursts and sudden mood swings. They become intimate, but soon after she confesses her love for him, he suddenly disappears, lighting out for Galveston under the cover of night. Daniel is never far from Jessica's mind, however, and even seems to find his way her recurring dream, which revolves around her in a cabin with a baby that somehow has Daniel's eyes. Eventually, things go sour for Daniel in Galveston, and after a brief fling with an alcoholic, he realizes he has powerful feelings for Jessica. He returns, and contacts her, but Jessica is tentative. However, after an odd conversation with her dying stepfather, she begins to suspect that she has known Daniel before, perhaps in a previous life. But before the two can be happy together, they will have to solve some puzzles from Daniel's past concerning the death of his son and a mysterious blank spot in his memory. Can Jessica convince Daniel to seek treatment for his mental illness? And were they really together centuries ago? Borderline is competently written, and Herndon captures the loneliness and uncertainty that plagues her characters. However, she usually does so through extended internal monologue, instead of more effectively bringing her characters to life through their words and actions.
Overly reliant on mental soliloquy to drive the plot, but tender, heartfelt and ultimately affecting.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-4208-7759-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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