A breezy, charming novel that finds humor in the societal pressures to find a husband.
A woman fakes her way through a London vacation in Macaulay’s comedic debut novel.
Third grade teacher Lucy Gray does not have much time for a love life, but everyone in her family has been getting married recently, and she can’t stand to attend her sister’s wedding alone. She begs a co-worker to come and pretend to be her boyfriend, but he ends up making out with her cousin in the photo booth—a fact that everyone discovers just as Lucy is giving her maid of honor speech. Afterward, the wedding psychic (it’s an ’80s-themed wedding) tells Lucy she needs to start listening to signs from the universe. It turns out that her sister, the indecisive Marian, booked two Christmastime honeymoons, and after she and her husband leave on their cruise to the islands of Greece, Lucy realizes there’s an unused hotel suite sitting in London. “I just happened to hear a message from someone in London because Marian happened to forget to cancel her reservation – something she’d never do in a million years,” thinks Lucy. “If this isn’t some kind of sign, then….” The only problem is that, while staying at the honeymooners-only Chaizer London, she’ll have to pretend to be Marian…and keep making excuses for why her new husband isn’t with it her. While reconnecting with an old classmate who happens to be in town, Lucy finally begins to feel a bit of freedom. Cary Stewart is an actor—a handsome one at that—and he proves amenable to stepping into the role of temporary husband. However, as her ruse attracts the attention of overzealous hotel employee Oliver Burke and her family back in Massachusetts begins to interfere, Lucy’s honeymoon-for-one transforms from a relaxing getaway into an increasingly complicated deception. Macaulay’s prose is smooth and funny, capturing Lucy’s family-related neuroses: “The next day, as I step outside The Chaizer into the morning sunshine, I am sad to report that it still hasn’t rained. Not once. In London. London, a place known for its rain. And Prince William. It’s almost as if my mother called Mother Nature and told her, mother-to-mother, to hold off until I left, just to spite me for embarking on this fool’s mission.” The plot is fairly absurd: Why would any hotel care whether or not its guests were really on their honeymoon? But Macaulay unfurls it in such a pleasant, slightly goofy way that its many contrivances seem forgivable. Lucy is an enjoyable protagonist, and her enthusiasm for the places she visits rubs off on the reader. The supporting characters are likable as well, and Macaulay’s portrayal of Lucy’s cartoonishly overbearing family—mostly in the form of blog posts—is truly anxiety inducing. Readers looking for a lighthearted love story with plenty of London coziness and Christmas cheer can do far worse than Macaulay’s charming vacation story.
A breezy, charming novel that finds humor in the societal pressures to find a husband.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 261
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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