A charming portrait of modern relationships and a touching tribute to Manhattan.
An unexpected journey through the past leads a woman to reconnect with her present in Walls’ (One Page Love Story: Share the Love, 2015, etc.) novella.
In a New York City hotel room, Angie Hart sits talking on the phone to her husband while he pages through their wedding album. The conversation is disjointed; they each occupy different emotional spaces, and Angie feels unsettled. During their call, the hotel manager unexpectedly shows up with a card embossed with a snowflake illustration and containing a mysterious message: “Do you remember falling in love? St. Dymphna’s, 9 P.M.” This sends Angie on a scavenger hunt through Manhattan, chasing down other clues, all marked with similar snowflakes. The quest leads her to bookstores and bars, and each stop conjures memories of her romantic past and the various men who defined her life—Teddy, her college sweetheart who broke her heart; Charles, the charmer who found it impossible to let her go; and Geoffrey, the young man from Michigan who talked his way into her heart and eventually became her husband. Angie visits her old haunts, desperate to discover who’s leading her on this journey through the city and what the result of this magical night will be. Walls’ captivating story jumps between past and present as Angie wades through her memories and puzzles out where to go next. Although the jumbled chronology is initially confusing, it’s ultimately effective. It’s intriguing to accompany the protagonist as she slowly rediscovers the beauty of New York City and finally comes to terms with the pain of her past relationships. Walls offers astute observations along the way; when Angie discovers a lover’s cellphone, for instance, she feels the “sense of disconnect when she is without her phone, magnified ten times by having his,” and the feeling of unease in this moment is immediately relatable.
A charming portrait of modern relationships and a touching tribute to Manhattan.Pub Date: March 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9913762-3-0
Page Count: 100
Publisher: Cunning Books
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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