The premise of Castillo’s third novel, after Hot Tamara (2005), fizzles with too-few romantic twists and a humdrum plot.
Mousy Isa Avellan is voted by her students to be the school's least sexy teacher, and soon the single soccer mom is on her way to a revamped image and a backseat love affair.
When Isa discovers that she is at the bottom of her high school’s “Sex Savvy Senior Survey,” she feels humiliated. Despite the fact that she adores watching the sizzling dolled-up babes on Dynasty, poor Isa doesn't know a frock from a frappe—and she's not sure if she wants to get caught up in a world where women grab men's attention with “slut clothes.” However, when she hears her slimy ex-husband on shock radio gabbing about the senior survey and his ex's lack of bedroom prowess, Isa accepts a pity date with her son's hunky soccer coach, Alex. With the help of a few with-it friends (and some advice from Joan Collins), Isa gets a smoking-hot makeover complete with a haircut, gobs of makeup and a slinky new wardrobe that turns her into a busty sexpot. With a jolt of confidence, Isa finds herself steering the pity date into an entirely new direction: the backseat. She and Alex, who is grappling with his own professional and personal concerns, throw caution—and condoms—to the wind and launch into a steamy love affair. Feeling like she has escaped the teenage prophecy, Isa is on top of the world. She has a new man and a new lease on life—and suddenly a peculiar feeling in her tummy. To make matters worse, the devoted mom discovers that her son isn't quite ready for his family of two to multiply. What is a newly sexy chica to do?
The premise of Castillo’s third novel, after Hot Tamara (2005), fizzles with too-few romantic twists and a humdrum plot.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-076682-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2006
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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