A perfect fit for the romance lover’s beach bag.
Bestseller Andrews introduces Greer Hennessy, a third-generation worker in the film industry, whose difficult background and current job trigger a flood of problems.
Greer’s personal life is a mess, and her professional one is no laughing matter, either. Following an incident involving a fire on her previous job, the location scout/manager is hoping to redeem herself working for Hollywood’s newest golden boy, director Bryce Levy. Although the script for his latest movie is vague and ever changing, Greer finds him the perfect location, a small dot on the map along Florida’s Gulf Coast fraught with heat, humidity, palmetto bugs, and little else. Economically stagnant Cypress Key has seen better days, and Greer assumes its citizens will jump at the opportunity to make some quick cash and spotlight their town. The area also features an old ramshackle building along the waterfront that’s perfect for the final scene—so long as Greer can secure permission to blow the erstwhile Cypress Key Casino to smithereens. Mayor Eb Thibadeaux (who apparently emulates Dr. Seuss’ Bartholomew Cubbins in the hat-wearing department: he’s also co-owner of a local motel, a realtor, grocery store and boat repair shop owner, and town engineer) is skeptical about the benefits of having a film crew invade the town, and he’s definitely against Greer’s plans for the historic structure. But he’s attracted to Greer, and she to him. A romance quickly develops, then ebbs and flows as a tidal wave of complications creates misunderstandings between the two—and there are plenty as Andrews floods the story with several secondary characters and subplots. The author uses her tried-and-true formula to good effect, though. As in many of her preceding novels (Save the Date, 2014, etc.), Andrews masterfully creates an entertaining story filled with likable characters and a few lightweight, havoc-wreaking troublemakers. Although far-fetched, it’s entirely fun.
A perfect fit for the romance lover’s beach bag.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-06593-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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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