Convoluted and overwritten (no detail is left undescribed), Hunter’s first effort is a disappointment.
A woman is hit with a hurricane of bad news: Her husband wants a divorce; her father's Alzheimer's is getting worse; her children aren't talking to her. Then she gets a mysterious package of paintings that may shed light on her mother's untimely death in a car accident.
Juliana is dissatisfied. Though she leads a pampered existence as the wife of a prominent Austin attorney, after 14 years their marriage has lost its spark. It might seem that Oliver's verbal abuse and sociopathic behavior (groping her in public, humiliating her among friends) would make Juliana happy to get out, but they decide on counseling. Then, at the first session, he serves her with divorce papers and insists she vacate the family home that evening. He's already told their 14-year-old twins that she's an adulterer, among other lies, so they’re glad to see her go. Without money of her own, Juliana retreats first to her brother’s house and then to her father’s when he’s taken to the hospital with a possible stroke. While Juliana is fixing up her childhood home—and trying to get back in Oliver’s good graces—a mysterious package arrives: a crate of paintings, made by her father, sent from a New York gallery. Juliana is stunned; her father was a fusty old CPA who gave no indication that he was an artist. Meanwhile, Oliver tells her he wants to reconcile (it's a trick), her friends have turned their backs (just as well—a couple of them are sleeping with Oliver), and she’s drinking one too many glasses of chardonnay. The novel’s implausible climax, in which a recurring dream from childhood comes true, enables Juliana to recover her identity, but nothing she does seems to flow from her character—it only serves to further the plot.
Convoluted and overwritten (no detail is left undescribed), Hunter’s first effort is a disappointment.Pub Date: May 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-930584-62-4
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Goldminds
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
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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