The very best in chick-lit.
Keyes’s proven formula for success—a chatty, engaging heroine, a bawdy sense of humor, an unhappy turn of events—works again in her eighth novel (The Other Side of the Story, 2004, etc.).
Three of the five Irish Walsh girls have novels of their own, and now it’s time for Anna’s story. The first 100 pages build up a mystery of sorts: Anna lies dazed in the front parlor of her parent’s Dublin home as her mother nurses her back to health. On her daily walk, the local schoolboys call her Frankenstein, and for good reason. With deep cuts and bandages on her face, fingers without nails, an arm cast and a limp, Anna has never looked less stylish (except when she wore all those hippie skirts). There are flashbacks to her recent life in New York, where she has The Best Job in the World in cosmetics public relations, and a hunky, adorable husband, Aidan. So what happened to Anna, and where’s Aidan in her time of need? Against everyone’s pleading, Anna returns to New York, and we learn the tragic truth: Anna and Aidan were in a car accident in which Aidan died. Now, Anna rings his cell phone everyday to hear his voicemail, she e-mails him about work, she wails at night and can’t imagine life without him. Over 400 pages of a widow’s emotional recovery would be hard-going if not for Keyes’s humor and grand cast of characters with their own quirky subplots. Back in Dublin, baby sister Helen, an unlikely private investigator, keeps Anna updated on her current big case—tailing the local crime lords’ misses, while Mammy Walsh keeps Anna current on her own little mystery—an old lady regularly brings her dog to poo on the Walsh’s doorstep. And now, desperate to find out where Aidan is, Anna starts frequenting afterlife psychics, which introduces a whole new set of oddballs. Anna begins to crawl out of her sorrow, but Keyes is cautious with the expected happy ending—for all the comedy, she creates a vivid portrait of grief.
The very best in chick-lit.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-073130-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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