A stylish, comic tale about unexpected changes in life.
Colando (Hashes & Bashes, 2016, etc.) tells the story of three friends, one of whom has just won the lottery, in the third novel in her Faith, Family, Frenzy! series.
Fran Blackstone Rankin recently married a pastor named Paul. One night, she gets a nighttime call from her friend Bonnie Voss asking her to watch the lottery results on TV to see if Bonnie’s numbers won; she can’t watch it herself because she’s currently driving to Las Vegas to elope with her boyfriend, Carl Edwards. When Fran informs Bonnie that she has, in fact, won $536 million, Carl convinces her to head back to Michigan to get legal advice and come up with a plan. On the way, Bonnie calls Jackie Breeden, her responsible friend. She’s been married to Carl’s half brother, Steve, since they were both just out of high school—although she’s getting a bit bored of life on the dairy farm that they operate with their 31-year-old son, Brandon. Jackie convinces Bonnie to think bigger; after a wedding in Vegas (with her dear friends present), she and the group will head off to Hawaii to enjoy some of her money, far from the confines of their Midwestern lives. As it turns out, however, the riches and travels may disrupt a lot more than their small-town boredom. Throughout this novel, Colando’s prose is energetic in style and often musical in tone, displaying a keen awareness of image and rhythm: “Virtual snapshots shuffled, blackjack fast, and whizzed past Jackie’s visual field.” However, it can get a bit too cute at times, as when Jackie contemplates telling her husband about Bonnie’s win: “How to share this world-tilting news with Steve would come to her while she peeled potatoes. A spud-bred plan for my stud.” Overall, though, the novel proves to be fun and low-stakes in a way that makes it a perfectly suitable read for a relaxing weekend.
A stylish, comic tale about unexpected changes in life.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947392-36-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Acorn
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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