White girl problems.
A down-on-her-luck NYC girl gets a taste of the limelight when she becomes personal assistant to a rock-star relative.
McLaughlin and Kraus (Nanny Returns, 2009, etc.) offer up another fable about a plucky 20-something beleaguered by an unstable employer. Their latest entry feels about seven years out of step with the times, as the crazy in the house this time is a Britney-esque pop star whose life is leaning dangerously towards the toxic. Our everygirl narrator is Logan Wade, who was offered the personal assistant gig by her cousin Kelsey when the young singer was first starting out. Now, Kelsey has become one of the world’s biggest celebrities, while Logan is living a half-life in the city with an arduous job, a selfish sort-of-boyfriend and a growing sense of dissatisfaction with her life. “Suddenly the life I’ve spent the last decade building is losing relevance, the veneer I’ve run frantic circles to secure showing its cracks like a puzzle held over a flashlight,” Logan says, in a characteristically overly wordy and featherweight observation from a generally impassive character. Even when the authors shoehorn Logan into the most glamorous and outrageous situations—and there are many, ranging from video shoots in exotic locales to flu-ridden blockbuster concerts to steamy Italian liaisons—she never seems to join the circus, just comments endlessly on it. Kelsey is a far more interesting collection of self-indulgences, poor choices and disconnects from reality, but her character is so fully drawn from real life that her troubles seem a bit clichéd. There are the paparazzi photos, her ill-advised romance with a sleazy backup dancer, a host of mood disorders and the helicopter parents who want to micromanage their daughter’s career, not to mention her life. The story shudders from plot point to plot point. Harmless, yes, but McLaughlin and Kraus flow better when their stories are more diabolical and less diatribe.
White girl problems.Pub Date: June 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4391-8818-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
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