by Nancy Coco ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 31, 2019
Personable characters and lots of honey lore make for an informative but mundane read.
The Oregon coast replaces Mackinac Island and honey stands in for fudge in Coco’s new cozy series, which sticks to a familiar pattern (Fudge Bites, 2019,etc.).
Together with her Havana brown cat, Everett, Wren Johnson, who’s settled in Oregon to be near her Aunt Eloise, lives above the shop she owns, Let It Bee, which specializes in all things honeybee. During one of the beach walks Everett enjoys on his leash, he alerts Wren to a dead body. Handsome beat cop Jim Hampton arrives on the scene to find her clutching a paper that was in the dead woman’s hand, a label from one of Wren’s lip balms. The woman is Agnes Snow, the wife of ex-mayor Bernie Snow and a fierce crafting rival of Aunt Eloise. Wren becomes a person of interest when the police discover poison in the lip balm. Lawyer Matt Hanson, taking her case pro bono, warns her not to talk to the police in his absence. So instead she talks to everyone else. Although she must watch as her reputation in town is torn to shreds, she still has friends who believe in her, from her sales manager, Porsche, to 911 operator Josie, and of course Aunt Eloise. Despite repeated warnings from Hampton, the three of them chat up the locals, hoping to provoke gossip and elicit possible motives for killing Agnes and framing Wren. They wonder if the cash deposits Agnes was making into her bank account could be blackmail payments that would provide a good motive for murder. When Everett is apparently catnapped, Wren, desperate to find him, ignores warnings that would keep her out of trouble.
Personable characters and lots of honey lore make for an informative but mundane read.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1976-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
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by Nancy Coco
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by Nancy Coco
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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