Spicy sexual chemistry and a generous dash of authentic Puerto Rican flavor blend together in a sharp romance that begs to...
A popular Hollywood actor who's putting his body through drastic transformations to establish himself as a versatile performer finds himself enamored by a sassy fitness trainer, learning that there’s more to life than a job.
Fitness expert and trainer Tori Alvarez decides to go to Aruba to escape the gossip and speculation surrounding her rocky relationship with a publicity-hungry politician. She meets up-and-coming sitcom star Carter Stone on her flight to Aruba, but since he's fresh from the set of a film which required him to shed several pounds and grow a beard, she doesn’t recognize him. Tori is still sore from her previous relationship, but she finds herself reluctantly charmed by Carter’s impishness, and they spend a couple of idyllic days laughing and bantering. Then, when a nosy paparazzo descends on Carter, Tori discovers the truth about his identity and feels tremendously betrayed. Hoping to thaw Tori’s anger, Carter approaches her for assistance when he realizes that he will have to gain back his robust physique quickly to bag a role in a big-budget Hollywood film. Before she can let Carter back into her life, though, Tori is forced to decide if she can overcome her reluctance to live a life in the public eye. The first installment in the Love on Cue series is charming, witty, and consistently funny and will get readers invested in the sharply etched secondary characters. Although the final resolution of Tori’s personal troubles seems too pat to ring true, Sosa hits all the right notes by weaving a uniformly entertaining story that effortlessly unpacks several socially relevant themes, such as the relationship between fitness and traditional cuisine and the nature of show business.
Spicy sexual chemistry and a generous dash of authentic Puerto Rican flavor blend together in a sharp romance that begs to be savored.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-269033-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
Three bridegrooms for three sisters: Roberts (True Betrayals, 1995, etc.) stylishly moseys into Big Sky romance. Jack Mercy was a mean son of a bitch when he was alive, and as a corpse, buried with his Stetson and his bullwhip, he's not much better. According to his will, his three daughters, who've never met and whom Jack had by three different wives, must live together for a year at his big Montana ranch house in order to win their inheritance. During the long winter, the women bicker and bond and get entangled with three sexy, strapping fellows. Roberts has always been a winner at sexual tension and sexy dialogue, and so the reader gets to see not one but three couples get past the preliminaries and into the sack. The youngest sister, cowgirl Willa, manager of the Mercy ranch and daughter of an Ute mother, matches wits and strong wills with Ben McKinnon, lusty part owner of the Three Rocks spread. Lily, from Virginia, is a delicate, bird-boned creature who's been battered by her husband, but is now taken under the wing of Adam Wolfchild, Willa's Indian half-brother. And, finally, Tess, a sharp-dressing, wisecracking screenwriter from Hollywood who couldn't wait to get back to Rodeo Drive, stays to marry Nate, a frontier lawyer who raises horses, graduated from Yale, and loves Keats. Providing the usual Roberts suspense is a serial killer who guts and scalps his victims—not only humans but (in the newest romance-novel manifestation of evil) calves, cats, skunks and deer. (Why would anyone do that to Bambi's mom? wails Tess.) Roberts also includes a genuine, successful red herring, virgin territory for most romance writers, and incorporates all the important rituals of the genre with her customary skill and humor. A good read on a long winter's night.
Pub Date: March 12, 1996
ISBN: 0-399-14122-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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