A sweet novel in which the reader gets surprisingly caught up in fairly frivolous events.
A lighthearted novel about birding and a wager to win the right to call a woman for a date.
The story is set in Nigeria, where former Nairobi resident Drayson (Confessing a Murder, 2002) introduces us to Mr. Malik, a shy widower whose son recently died of AIDS. As a way of having at least some semblance of a social life, he’s been going on weekly excursions with the local birding club, led by the attractive Rose Mbikwa. Shortly before the big social event of the year, the Nairobi Hunt Club Ball, the brash but charming Harry Khan shows up. In their school days more than 40 years earlier he had bullied Mr. Malik, and now he seems determined to best him again by courting Rose. Because both men are interested in inviting her to the ball, they decide on a gentleman’s bet, to be adjudicated by members of the Nairobi Asadi Club. The wager is for the right to invite Rose to the ball, a right that will be given to whoever identifies the greatest number of birds in one week. While he knows far more about womanizing than about birding, Harry wastes no time lining up a couple of ornithologically astute Australian tourists to help him out, and because Harry is both rich and competitive, he has no qualms in pulling out all the stops—hiring a plane to take him to Mount Kenya, for example, to augment his week’s list. Meanwhile, for Mr. Malik things go painfully and comically awry. His car is stolen, which makes traveling beyond the bounds of Nairobi a serious problem, and after he recovers the car he’s held up by machine-gun-toting bandits. With less than 24 hours to go he finds himself down by one, with 198 species to Harry’s 199.
A sweet novel in which the reader gets surprisingly caught up in fairly frivolous events.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-547-15258-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable...
An unlucky woman finally gets lucky in love on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii.
From getting her hand stuck in a claw machine at age 6 to losing her job, Olive Torres has never felt that luck was on her side. But her fortune changes when she scores a free vacation after her identical twin sister and new brother-in-law get food poisoning at their wedding buffet and are too sick to go on their honeymoon. The only catch is that she’ll have to share the honeymoon suite with her least favorite person—Ethan Thomas, the brother of the groom. To make matters worse, Olive’s new boss and Ethan’s ex-girlfriend show up in Hawaii, forcing them both to pretend to be newlyweds so they don’t blow their cover, as their all-inclusive vacation package is nontransferable and in her sister’s name. Plus, Ethan really wants to save face in front of his ex. The story is told almost exclusively from Olive’s point of view, filtering all communication through her cynical lens until Ethan can win her over (and finally have his say in the epilogue). To get to the happily-ever-after, Ethan doesn’t have to prove to Olive that he can be a better man, only that he was never the jerk she thought he was—for instance, when she thought he was judging her for eating cheese curds, maybe he was actually thinking of asking her out. Blending witty banter with healthy adult communication, the fake newlyweds have real chemistry as they talk it out over snorkeling trips, couples massages, and a few too many tropical drinks to get to the truth—that they’re crazy about each other.
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable as well as free.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2803-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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