A quirky, uplifting love story.
In Whitaker’s debut romance, a young doctor gets another chance at love when he discovers that his deceased childhood sweetheart has been reincarnated nearly two decades later.
Sixteen-year-old Amber Scott moves into a new house with her family in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies. Concerned about adjusting to life in a new town, Amber is delighted to notice a handsome boy about her age shooting baskets in the adjacent driveway. Before long, she and this next-door neighbor, Julian Cahill, become a devoted couple. It turns out that he’d been quite the lady’s man before meeting Amber, so everyone in town is surprised that someone has finally captured his heart. But as the couple grows closer, Amber begins having headaches and seizures, which turn out to be caused by a brain tumor; her health quickly deteriorates, and Julian is devastated. Amber is ultimately unable to beat the disease, and she dies the summer after her senior year in high school. During his mourning, Julian decides to become a neurosurgeon to honor her. The book then jumps forward 18 years, showing 35-year-old Julian as a renowned surgeon. He’s giving a tour of the hospital to young college students and is shocked to come face to face with Destiny Bradshaw, who’s the spitting image of his beloved. She soon reveals to him that she’s Amber, reincarnated. After initial skepticism, Julian is thrilled; however, Destiny is only 18, and she and Julian have many obstacles ahead of them. Although this story requires a significant suspension of disbelief, Whitaker manages to deliver a moving tale of love and heartbreak that’s as absorbing as it is touching. The prose is fast-paced, accessible, and engaging, and the dialogue usefully moves the jam-packed plot forward, although the teenage characters sometimes speak with a maturity that feels like a bit of a stretch. Still, the tale is full of humorous and sentimental moments that illuminate the struggle of finding and maintaining a meaningful relationship. There are so many clever plot details and intriguing subplots, though, that the story might have fared better if it were told in multiple volumes or even as a series.
A quirky, uplifting love story.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5496-4080-3
Page Count: 485
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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