While the prose needs further editing, Ronco puts a novel spin on lost love.
A high-stakes tale of boy-meets-girl, etc.
Jack Gage was a handsome, down-on-his-luck kid, born in prison to a mother taking the fall for his deviant, absent father. When Jack was 12, his mother died, leaving him to live with an aunt and uncle in a small seaside town. Shortly after, he meets her, the prettiest girl in school and the one who would steal his heart forever: Patti Cain. When they were both 18, Patti and Jack shared a single kiss, followed by a proclamation: While he’ll always be the one she wants, stability and money come before love. The two went off to separate colleges. Jack became a great golf player and Patti, a millionaire’s wife. Now, 20 years later, Jack is professional gambler, wielding poker and golf as his weapons of choice and nursing a fading hope of ever seeing Patti again. Then, Jack’s old high school nemesis, Van Taylor, appears and makes Jack an offer: help Van hijack business from one of the richest men in Florida—Patti Cain’s husband. Though the odds are stacked against him, Jack will risk it all to see his true love again. Ronco (Elevator Symphonies, 1999) endeavors to combine the finesse of golf and high-stakes intrigue of poker into a story of inaccessible love. While readers may be able to forgive the proliferation of exclamation marks, they might become a bit frustrated with the considerable amount of explication, as well as the play-by-play of every golf hole and poker hand, which renders the plot a bit static. Despite this, Ronco provides a twisty, unpredictable plot, with Jack Gage proving to be a fairly reliable narrator exhibiting devious but understandable intentions.
While the prose needs further editing, Ronco puts a novel spin on lost love.Pub Date: July 9, 2011
ISBN: 978-1463611903
Page Count: 254
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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