Entertaining over-the-top melodrama, with a nonsensical plot pitting an appealing pair of lovers against a dastardly villain.
The adventurous romance of Gabriella Martinez and Richard Harrison continues in Alonso-Sierra’s follow-up to The Coin (2014).
Talented and lovely Gabriella has illustrated a medieval manuscript, The Book of Hours, scheduled for auction at Christie’s in London. The book’s artistry attracts vile Arnold Wickeham, who hopes to coerce Gabriella to sell it to him pre-auction for 250,000 pounds. Meanwhile, Gabriella’s personal life is in turmoil. She’s in love with Richard Harrison, an American intelligence operative who once saved her life; at the time, Gabriella had been reluctant to end the relationship with her husband, Roberto. After a ghastly car accident involving a sanitation truck, comatose Roberto is on life support, jeopardizing the future of his company. Roberto’s affections also wavered; he was en route to meet his lover when the mishap occurred, on the same day Gabriella finally asked for a divorce. As Wickeham’s threats against Gabriella mount, Richard returns to her side. There’s no denying their mutual attraction or that her son, Luisito, looks like him. As the auction date approaches, Wickeham will stop at nothing—including brake tampering, kidnapping, and torture—to secure The Book of Hours. Still, Gabriella adamantly refuses to give in. Elsewhere, scheming April Cranfield, who wants Richard back in her bed, plans to entrap him and bear his child. Sierra’s novel is a lively mix of adventure, drama, and an affecting romantic reunion, marred by some awkward prose: “Gabriella actually owed Roberto a grateful ‘thanks’ for plopping the overflow drop into the bucket of her restraint.” At times, the story feels like an episode of daytime drama, with a wicked but not very bright villain squaring off against a man and a woman heroically determined and cued for rescue. The biggest stumbling block is the premise: it’s obvious Wickeham is behind the threats against Gabriella. He might have used his quarter-million pounds to hire a thief and walk quietly away with the manuscript.
Entertaining over-the-top melodrama, with a nonsensical plot pitting an appealing pair of lovers against a dastardly villain.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-0986209505
Page Count: 314
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A love letter to the power of books and friendship.
Women become horseback librarians in 1930s Kentucky and face challenges from the landscape, the weather, and the men around them.
Alice thought marrying attractive American Bennett Van Cleve would be her ticket out of her stifling life in England. But when she and Bennett settle in Baileyville, Kentucky, she realizes that her life consists of nothing more than staying in their giant house all day and getting yelled at by his unpleasant father, who owns a coal mine. She’s just about to resign herself to a life of boredom when an opportunity presents itself in the form of a traveling horseback library—an initiative from Eleanor Roosevelt meant to counteract the devastating effects of the Depression by focusing on literacy and learning. Much to the dismay of her husband and father-in-law, Alice signs up and soon learns the ropes from the library’s leader, Margery. Margery doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her, rejects marriage, and would rather be on horseback than in a kitchen. And even though all this makes Margery a town pariah, Alice quickly grows to like her. Along with several other women (including one black woman, Sophia, whose employment causes controversy in a town that doesn’t believe black and white people should be allowed to use the same library), Margery and Alice supply magazines, Bible stories, and copies of books like Little Women to the largely poor residents who live in remote areas. Alice spends long days in terrible weather on horseback, but she finally feels happy in her new life in Kentucky, even as her marriage to Bennett is failing. But her powerful father-in-law doesn’t care for Alice’s job or Margery’s lifestyle, and he’ll stop at nothing to shut their library down. Basing her novel on the true story of the Pack Horse Library Project established by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, Moyes (Still Me, 2018, etc.) brings an often forgotten slice of history to life. She writes about Kentucky with lush descriptions of the landscape and tender respect for the townspeople, most of whom are poor, uneducated, and grateful for the chance to learn. Although Alice and Margery both have their own romances, the true power of the story is in the bonds between the women of the library. They may have different backgrounds, but their commitment to helping the people of Baileyville brings them together.
A love letter to the power of books and friendship.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-56248-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The previous books of this author (Devil of a State, 1962; The Right to an Answer, 1961) had valid points of satire, some humor, and a contemporary view, but here the picture is all out—from a time in the future to an argot that makes such demands on the reader that no one could care less after the first two pages.
If anyone geta beyond that—this is the first person story of Alex, a teen-age hoodlum, who, in step with his times, viddies himself and the world around him without a care for law, decency, honesty; whose autobiographical language has droogies to follow his orders, wallow in his hate and murder moods, accents the vonof human hole products. Betrayed by his dictatorial demands by a policing of his violence, he is committed when an old lady dies after an attack; he kills again in prison; he submits to a new method that will destroy his criminal impulses; blameless, he is returned to a world that visits immediate retribution on him; he is, when an accidental propulsion to death does not destroy him, foisted upon society once more in his original state of sin.
What happens to Alex is terrible but it is worse for the reader.
Pub Date: Jan. 8, 1962
ISBN: 0393928098
Page Count: 357
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1962
SEEN & HEARD
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