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
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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