An engaging tale about celebrity, love, and the search for one’s place in the world.
A newly famous woman attempts to seize control of her life in this comic novel.
Former actress BunnyLee Welles has just returned to Los Angeles for a wedding after four years bumming around Southeast Asia. Many of her old acquaintances have found success in Hollywood—Ted is a stand-up comedian and Rebekah, a TV news anchor. BunnyLee is experiencing fame of a different sort: A denture commercial she acted in years before has become an unlikely internet phenomenon, making her instantly recognizable. She’s now being stopped on the street, handed screenplays, and accosted for selfies. Looking to lay low, she seeks shelter at the compound of aging movie star and recent viral victim Buck LeGrande, whom she met playing tennis. Buck’s years-old altercation with a famous Muppet on Sesame Street has come roaring back with a vengeance so he’s sympathetic to BunnyLee’s plight. She is wary of Buck’s reputation—“a man who was famous for being a single man”—but soon their friendship gives rise to romantic tensions and jealousies. BunnyLee decides the time to leave has arrived, and she does so—in Buck’s vintage Mustang. She hits the road with her new dog, Puddles, and eventually crosses paths with a down-on-his-luck cowboy wrestler named Austin Sway. Can the various parties find the serenity they seek in the celebrity-obsessed American West? Temple’s prose is exact and full of color, capable of both madcap humor and wistful lyricism: “Austin thought again about the lovely bartender left behind, another face in a storyline of wistful memories of what might have been....Austin blew the Eldorado’s dual-trumpet horn, sounding like one of those locomotives that opened the West and drowned out the vast, untamed loneliness.” The characters are recognizable types—particularly Chinese cook Jimmy Chan, who treads uncomfortably into trope territory—and their stories are generally low stakes. Even so, the book’s buoyant energy and swift pacing will carry readers along. There’s a telegraphed sense of how everything will end up, but that doesn’t detract too much from the lighthearted journey.
An engaging tale about celebrity, love, and the search for one’s place in the world.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
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
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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