A captivating novel about five characters’ fateful decisions that should leave readers feeling inspired to make positive...
The lives of five friends intersect on their respective journeys toward happiness and success.
In this part motivational, part self-improvement debut novel, five friends obsessed with wealth and success try to turn their lives around for the better. Carrie Kendall is the granddaughter of a prosperous businessman who reassures her, “Whatever you can imagine can come true.…You have the power inside you.” Upon his death, he entrusts her with the family’s corporation, Kendall Innovations Incorporated, and she’ll do anything to ensure that she will someday become its president. Gina Stevens is her only friend, a model who has been able to skate by just on her looks. After a near-death experience, Gina remembers a card she received from a stranger after running away from home that read, “I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it?,” resulting in a resolution to “make some changes in her life.” David Hendricks, a corporate businessman, gets caught up in a life of drugs and partying. He cheats on his wife and ignores his children. His drug dealer, Hank Johns, grew up on the streets of Las Vegas, hustling and hoping for a better situation. After a traumatic encounter with David, Hank dedicates his life to his young son, but David faces more trouble getting his act together—until he meets Sara Collins. After enduring three marriages and getting fired from her dream job, Sara follows her mother’s advice that “thoughts are powerfully creative” by starting her own event planning company called Dare to Dream. Though filled with complex characters, this novel’s plot is often summarized, giving the story a rushed quality, and the major events that become catalysts for changes in the characters’ lives rely too much on melodrama. But to De Groat’s credit, the protagonists’ odysseys toward finding stable family relationships and healthy romances are inspirational, and her message is ultimately positive. Through Sara, she reminds readers that “Love equals happiness; happiness comes from sharing with people I love.”
A captivating novel about five characters’ fateful decisions that should leave readers feeling inspired to make positive changes in their own lives.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-941478-19-6
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Windy City Publisher
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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