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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Lunge-Larsen and Preus debut with this story of a flower that blooms for the first time to commemorate the uncommon courage of a girl who saves her people from illness. The girl, an Ojibwe of the northern woodlands, knows she must journey to the next village to get the healing herb, mash-ki- ki, for her people, who have all fallen ill. After lining her moccasins with rabbit fur, she braves a raging snowstorm and crosses a dark frozen lake to reach the village. Then, rather than wait for morning, she sets out for home while the villagers sleep. When she loses her moccasins in the deep snow, her bare feet are cut by icy shards, and bleed with every step until she reaches her home. The next spring beautiful lady slippers bloom from the place where her moccasins were lost, and from every spot her injured feet touched. Drawing on Ojibwe sources, the authors of this fluid retelling have peppered the tale with native words and have used traditional elements, e.g., giving voice to the forces of nature. The accompanying watercolors, with flowing lines, jewel tones, and decorative motifs, give stately credence to the story’s iconic aspects. (Picture book/folklore. 4-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-90512-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
Cussler's most adult, least comic-strip-y entry yet in the Dirk Pitt sea sagas. Gone is the outlandish plotting of Treasure (1988), when Dirk found Cleopatra's barge in Texas, and of Sahara (199), which unearthed Lincoln's body in a Confederate sub—buried in the desert sands. Now, in his 11th outing, Dirk Pitt and his National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) fight villainous megalomaniac Arthur Dorsett, head of Dorsett Consolidated Mining, which holds the world's wealthiest diamond-mine empire. Pitt and his team must fight as well Dorsett's three daughters, the coldly beauteous Amazonian Boudicca, whose giant strength dwarfs Dirk's; the elegant but heartless Deirdre; and the star-crossed zoologist Maeve, whose bastard twins are held captive by grandfather Arthur so that Maeve will infiltrate NUMA and report on its investigation of his holdings—even though Dirk recently saved Maeve and Deirdre's lives in the Antarctic. First, however, Cussler takes us back to 1856 and a typhoon-battered British clipper ship, the Gladiator, that sinks in uncharted seas off Australia; only eight survive, including Jess Dorsett "the highwayman," a dandyish-looking convict, who discovers raw diamonds when stranded on an uninhabited island. From this arises the Dorsett empire, bent on undermining the world market in diamonds by dumping a colossal backlog of stones and colored gems into its vast chain of jewelry stores and, with one blow, toppling De Beers and all rivals. Worse, Arthur Dorsett excavates by high-energy-pulsed ultrasound, and when ultrasound from all four of his island mines (one on Gladiator Island, near New Zealand, another by Easter Island, the last two in the North Pacific Ocean) happen to converge, a killer shock wave destroys all marine and human life for 30 kilometers around, and now threatens over a million people in Hawaii—unless Dirk Pitt's aging body can hold it back. Tireless mechanical nomenclature, but furious storytelling.
Pub Date: Jan. 2, 1996
ISBN: 0-684-80297-X
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1995
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