A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The Bataan Death March of chick-lit: At 200 pages, it might have been diverting, at 350-plus, it’s just painful.
Entertainment lawyer crunches the numbers, drastically ups her dating frequency to increase likelihood of meeting Mr. Right, like, now.
The whiny heroine of Orsoff’s debut is Julie Burns, a 32-year-old East Coast girl living in L.A. and practicing law for a real jerk of a boss. She’s sort of trying to find a man, though the last one left her emotionally scarred and somewhat skittish. But when perennial bridesmaid Julie starts talking to the friendly bartender at her cousin Sharon’s wedding, gets completely blitzed and wakes up without her water bra, she decides that she needs to go ahead and find a man already. Her campaign doesn’t begin well: The first likely prospect Julie meets is a nice ER doctor who grabs a bucket for her when she almost projectile-vomits on him after getting food-poisoning. Then the wedding bartender and her bra resurface in embarrassing fashion. The bulk of the text occupies itself with the rituals of SoCal dating and a protagonist blessed with plenty of friends willing to set her up. Naturally, it wouldn’t do for Julie to find true love on the first date, and her litany of disappointing encounters mines familiar comic territory. Girl has high hopes, guy seems normal and a potential prospect, then turns out to be a mutant in an especially grotesque but amusing way. Laugh. Repeat. Mr. Right found eventually. Unfortunately, Orsoff’s way of accomplishing this is to send Julie on a series of bad—not awful, just drearily bad—dates, then let her complain incessantly about them to her astonishingly patient girlfriends over pints of Ben and Jerry’s. Note to author: Provide protagonist with at least one positive or endearing quality.
The Bataan Death March of chick-lit: At 200 pages, it might have been diverting, at 350-plus, it’s just painful.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 0-451-21774-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
The semi-existent plot and ditzy characters serve as background for a lesson in what to wear if you have money to burn.
Sykes (Bergdorf Blondes, 2004) turns her affectionately satiric attention to the A-list divorce circuit.
When new hubby Hunter is called away to work on the television show he’s producing, Sylvie finds herself alone on her honeymoon. She soon meets Lauren and Tinsley, glam gals who are staying at the same luxurious Mexican resort on a different kind of honeymoon: They’re celebrating their recent divorces. Lauren, Sylvie’s new best friend, sets as her goal to make out with five men between Labor Day and Memorial Day. Soon Sylvie’s friends are back in New York changing designer outfits even more often than they’re attending parties, jetting off to hot spots and meeting new eligible and not-so-eligible men. Lauren, an heiress in her own right and a jewelry trader, is pursued by an elderly married tycoon but finds herself in Moscow attracted to the mysterious owner of a fabulous jewel. Wandering through the pages are all the stereotypical rich, beautiful, shallow society types readers of In Style know so well. And, of course, there is the gay interior decorator sidekick/confidante whom Lauren hires to decorate Sylvie’s apartment. When Hunter finally comes home from his trip, he turns out to be not only handsome but also loving and sensitive, a real catch—except that there is a catch; he has hired as an assistant the man-eater Sophia. Is Sylvie’s marriage threatened almost before it begins? Not to worry, Hunter is true-blue. Besides, in the best and only truly nasty bit here, a divorced Arabian princess arranges for Sophia’s comeuppance by introducing her to a handsome Arab prince whom Sophia marries, only to find herself stuck in his Saudi harem.
The semi-existent plot and ditzy characters serve as background for a lesson in what to wear if you have money to burn.Pub Date: May 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-4013-5244-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
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