A promising premise is scuttled by mawkish writing, dithering dialogue and a meandering plot.
A horse-therapy program helps mitigate the tragic consequences of a drunk-driving accident, in businessman Barclay’s debut.
The author's concept is solid. In a Boca Ratan auto crash, a drunk driver and the occupants of the vehicle he hit are killed. Five years later, Wyatt Blaine, whose wife Krista and son Danny died in the accident, and Gabrielle “Gabby” Powers, widow of the drunk driver, meet. Their minister has persuaded Wyatt to admit Gabby’s troubled son, Trevor, to an equine-therapy program at the Blaine family's Flying B Ranch. Wyatt and Gabby are understandably wary of one another, and Trevor thinks Krista caused the accident. With such material, why is this earnest first novel about as riveting as a five-hour PowerPoint presentation? Perhaps it's the sluggish narration and excessive attention to preliminaries. The equine therapy doesn’t even start until some 100 pages in. The program’s impact on Gabby’s son Trevor, whose combativeness in school, not helped by his retro–James Dean get-up, has him on the verge of expulsion, is never really shown—one minute he’s slouching and not making eye contact, the next minute he’s respectful to adults, having exchanged his greaser persona for a Stetson and cowboy boots. The attraction between Gabby and Wyatt is as rote as the appeal of Barbie for Ken, a pair they also resemble physically. Two minor characters threaten to run away with the story. Ramsey (Ram) Blaine, founder and patriarch of the Flying B, is desperately trying to stave off Alzheimer’s and hold on to the reins as benevolent dictator and champion of underdogs like Trevor and Gabby. Then there is Mercy, a ranch hand who cleans up as well as any filly but can out-wrangle any guy, whether at horsemanship, poker or drinking. Her only weakness is her unrequited passion for Wyatt. Several interesting conflicts are introduced but not developed—the preposterously catastrophic close hardly makes up the drama deficit.
A promising premise is scuttled by mawkish writing, dithering dialogue and a meandering plot.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-196688-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2010
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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