A callow but diverting piece of fluff.
An ardent hunk pursues a skittish news-diva across three continents in this frothy romance.
Cable-news foreign correspondent Paige La Reine is, she modestly allows, “gorgeous, divine, flawless” and “stunning,” but so consumed by her career that true love eludes her. She clearly needs an intrepid man to breach her defenses, someone like Dylan Fletcher, a tall, rich, blue-eyed stud who looks great bare-chested. Paige first encounters Dylan as an anonymous ogler in the south of France; later, when he summons her to London for an interview, she learns he is the celebrated composer of rock musicals. The Q-and-A goes so well—“forcefully his mouth took mine with a passion that sent furious sensations down my spine”—that Dylan follows Paige to Los Angeles and drags her off for a glorious weekend at his ocean-front hideaway. She’s besotted with his sensitive manliness and shirtless guitar-strumming—until he fails to return a phone call with the requisite alacrity, whereupon she dumps him for the heartless bastard he has suddenly revealed himself to be. But Dylan isn’t easily put off; he’s forever popping up at chic restaurants and glamorous parties to smolder at her, forcing her into luxurious penthouses, breaking down hotel-room doors to subject her to brutal lovemaking. Finally she flees to Afghanistan to cover the war—and guess who appears at the head of a Special Forces outfit? Busch tells her yarn with a lightly lascivious tone—“he stared at my body from head to toe, sensually focusing on my breasts”—and a breezy pace. Paige is a vain featherweight—it takes a sojourn in a menacing Afghan village, the novel’s best scene, to briefly dampen her narcissism—while Dylan, an improbable cross between James Bond and Andrew Lloyd Webber, is a stentorian block. (“I thought I’d wait and then corner you when you were tired, hoping that you would not fight my indomitable spirit.”) But why worry about trifles when there’s so much sex and shopping going on?
A callow but diverting piece of fluff.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-0615302423
Page Count: 266
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
To her usual mix of love, mystery, and passion, Roberts (Sanctuary, 1997, etc.)—author of 115 romancers in some 17 years—adds Renaissance art and a decidedly Medici-like family: the Joneses of Maine. Dr. Miranda Jones, nearly six feet with flaming red hair and a glacial reserve, is an archeometrist who specializes in the analyzing and dating of Renaissance bronze sculpture. Miranda hopes to secure a world-class reputation for herself by authenticating a 15th-century statue of the Dark Lady, one of the mistresses of Lorenzo the Magnificent, as the undiscovered work of a young Michelangelo. Miranda's mother, Dr. Elizabeth Standford-Jones, the emotionally remote director of the Standjo art lab in Florence, has summoned her daughter from the family's Victorian cliffside home in Jones Point, Maine, to test the statue. Meanwhile, Miranda's father, equally remote, is an archaeologist who spends more time at his digs than at home. In fact, no one in the Jones family has made a successful run at marriage, a failure that Miranda and her alcoholic brother Andrew call the Jones curse. As for the statue, when it's discovered to be a fake, Miranda sets out to prove that someone stole the original. In this she's helped by gorgeous art thief Ryan Boldari (half-Italian, half-Irish), who's come to Jones Point to steal yet another bronze, which also turns out to be a forgery. Ryan's plan had been to use Miranda as a pawn, but now, naturally, he finds himself falling hard for her. While the two search for bronzes, a standard-issue romance-novel psychotic is stalking them. Most readers will twig to the killer's identity: Here, as always, Roberts's sexual tension is more compelling than her suspense. Perhaps it's time to take a sabbatical from the pink sweatshop and turn her considerable wit and narrative skills to a more original piece of work.
Pub Date: March 23, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-14387-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1998
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