by Melissa Pritchard ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2004
The quirkiness feels forced, the sex dreary. Pritchard fans will be disappointed.
A middle-aged romance writer’s affair with a younger man feeds her fiction in Pritchard’s third novel (Selene of the Spirits, 1998, etc.), which aspires to comment on the genre.
Single mother Prudence True Parker teaches Advanced Personal Journey at an Arizona community college, not a gig that’s exactly making her rich. In the public toilet of her local library, she has a chance encounter with cross-dressing Digby Deeds, better known under the name “Mildred Crawley” as a wildly successful romance author. Whimsically insisting their meeting was “divinely ordained,” the dying Digby/Mildred asks Prudence to complete his Savage Passion series. All she has to do is flesh out the plots he bequeaths her, and her financial worries will end. Then, while volunteering (for reasons too strained to recount) at an Indian charity event in Oklahoma, Prudence meets Ray Chasing Hawk, a handsome if slightly androgynous Comanche with whom she shares a night of passion. Returning home to Tempe, she resumes teaching and raising her increasingly independent 17-year-old daughter Fiona. But soon Ray comes calling, and before long he’s moved in. Quite a handy coincidence, since Mildred Crawley planned her next book as a white woman/Indian chief romance. Pritchard contrasts that fantasy passion with Prudence’s less-than-perfect affair with Ray, who is angry, narcissistic, secretive about his friendships with other women, and perfectly willing to live off her money. Readers may be as bewildered as Fiona by her mother’s enthrallment, though she herself (seen as a kind of Prudence-lite) has not chosen much better. Prudence gains new respect for Ray after he undergoes the demanding rites of the Sun Dance Ceremony, and Pritchard’s depiction of the Native American culture, refreshingly politically incorrect at first, now becomes sentimentally reverential. When he discovers that Prudence has been using him as a model for her fiction, Ray feels used, but tensions are all too easily resolved.
The quirkiness feels forced, the sex dreary. Pritchard fans will be disappointed.Pub Date: March 16, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-50304-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004
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by Nora Roberts ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 13, 1995
Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.
Pub Date: June 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14059-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2008
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
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