Andrews delivers a satisfying read that will leave a taste as tangy, delicious and sweet as an ice-cold bottle of Quixie...
Andrews’ latest romance serves up a tale about love, duplicity and second chances in this entertaining novel set in the Deep South.
Advertising executive Annajane Hudgens is both excited and nervous about her future. In five days, she’ll be leaving her rural hometown in Passcoe, N.C., and traveling to Atlanta to start a new job and a promising life with her fiancé, bluegrass musician Shane Drummond. She has a few loose ends to tie up before she goes, including selling her loft and attending the marriage of rich and socially prominent Mason Bayless to beautiful and glamorous Celia Wakefield. Mason is the president of his family-owned business, the Quixie Beverage Company, and he also just happens to be Annajane’s boss and ex-husband. Celia, a newcomer to the company with a mysterious past, may have won his heart in a few short months, but she’s also managed to alienate Annajane and her best friend, Pokey, Mason’s spirited and outspoken sister. When an emergency interrupts the wedding ceremony, Annajane discovers that leaving Passcoe might not be as easy as she envisioned. Her unresolved feelings for Mason resurface, and it appears that Mason may share those feelings. As Annajane grapples with her emotions and the truth about her former marriage, she finds herself pitted against the manipulative Celia and her hostile former mother-in-law, Sallie. Both have reason to want Annajane to leave town, but just how far will each of these women go to control Mason and, through him, the future of Quixie Cola and the Bayless family? Enriched with Southern charm, character and colloquialisms, the author creates an appealing story full of unique personalities and clever plot twists.
Andrews delivers a satisfying read that will leave a taste as tangy, delicious and sweet as an ice-cold bottle of Quixie soda.Pub Date: June 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-64271-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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