Despite some flaws, this book offers a well-executed, dramatic storyline that highlights problematic issues in our social...
Parker Redman (and other familiar characters from 2010’s Daddy By Default) must deal with the positive and negative aftermath of his legal battle over paternity issues and father’s rights.
Five years after a devastating legal battle that turned his life upside down, Parker Redman has started a nonprofit organization that advocates for father’s rights. However, his struggles aren’t over. Someone holds a grudge and has some pretty powerful leverage over him; information that will upend his life once again and threaten his good name, his new career and his family’s hard-won equilibrium. In the midst of fighting for his own reputation, Parker must also guide a young, famous basketball player in dealing with complicated past and present relationships and the financial obligations he has to children he’s likely fathered. Meanwhile, Lachez—the woman who went to jail for fraud in Parker’s case—is out and learning to navigate life as a convicted felon while trying to save her 17-year-old son from his cougar girlfriend. Tucker’s sequel to Daddy By Default continues her sharp-eyed look at a legal and social system that leaves men vulnerable in paternity issues but also spotlights a mercenary, vengeful facet to some of the women involved. With smooth writing, strong, effective characterization and a plot that is generally credible—if occasionally jaw-dropping and at times irritating as we watch characters make really bad, yet believable, choices—Tucker does a good job of using story to examine problematic true-to-life circumstances. Certain character choices are questionable, like Lachez’s 17-year-old son preparing to marry a much older woman—statutory rape issues? This likely wouldn’t make it in if the minor were a girl—or the sheer self-centered vindictiveness of the main protagonist. But while these aspects make the book difficult to endure at times, it’s not clear that they detract from the work as a whole, particularly when viewed from the perspective of a gritty realism. An abrupt ending may be a segue to another sequel, but it does leave an unfinished air to the work.
Despite some flaws, this book offers a well-executed, dramatic storyline that highlights problematic issues in our social and legal systems, balanced by an honorable main character dedicated to doing the right thing.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59309-404-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Strebor/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2012
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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