Plucky British stylist Amber Green takes her talents to Manhattan, where her drive to gain Instagram followers lands her in hot water.
Fashionistas will delight in Nixon’s sophomore novel, a sequel to The Stylist (2018), picking up Amber’s story nine months later. Now rid of the eccentric, alcoholic Mona Armstrong, the stylist to the stars who set Amber on the map, Amber is happily dressing windows at the prestigious London department store Selfridges’ and snuggling up with her boyfriend, Rob, a documentary film director. When Rob gets a chance to work on Angel Wings, an American reality series charting the daily lives of lingerie supermodels, Amber is relieved to be asked to go with him—she understandably sees a flock of gorgeous, scantily clad women as a threat to their fledgling love affair. Once in Manhattan, however, Amber realizes she can't get a paying job without a visa, so she sets about retooling her social media presence. Within days she’s gained thousands of followers, but they may be following her for all the wrong reasons, since her first posts inadvertently shamed a prominent, balding fashion mogul and connected Amber to an alleged Nazi sympathizer. And when the stylist on Rob’s series walks out Amber finds herself in competition with an angry Mona for the gig. A master of slapstick comedy, Nixon keeps the pace fast and the tone bubbly. From celebrities who don’t actually like clothing to a clandestine fake-designer-bag scheme, the crises in each chapter ratchet up the tension between some disastrous, alcohol-fueled decisions and Amber’s talent in seizing the unlikeliest opportunities to advance her career. Nixon deftly crafts a Cinderella story for the millennial age in which our heroine finds not only her prince, but also her true friends.
Glossy and teeming with influencers and fashionistas, this is a charming novel.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-286390-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
Categories: GENERAL ROMANCE | ROMANCE | CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE
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BOOK REVIEW
A clever, romantic, sexy love story.
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The much-loved royal romance genre gets a fun and refreshing update in McQuiston’s debut.
Alex Claremont-Diaz, son of the American President Ellen Claremont, knows one thing for sure: He hates Henry, the British prince to whom he is always compared. He lives for their verbal sparring matches, but when one of their fights at a royal wedding goes a bit too far, they end up falling into a wedding cake and making tabloid headlines. An international scandal could ruin Alex’s mother’s chances for re-election, so it’s time for damage control. The plan? Alex and Henry must pretend to be best friends, giving the tabloids pictures of their bromance and neutralizing the threat to Ellen's presidency. But after a few photo ops with Henry, Alex starts to realize that the passionate anger he feels toward him might be a cover for regular old passion. There are, naturally, a million roadblocks between their first kiss and their happily-ever-after—how can American political royalty and actual British royalty ever be together? How can they navigate being open about their sexualities (Alex is bisexual; Henry is gay) in their very public and very scrutinized roles? Alex and Henry must decide if they’ll risk their futures, their families, and their careers to take a chance on happiness. Although the story’s premise might be a fantasy—it takes place in a world in which a divorced-mom Texan Democrat won the 2016 election—the emotions are all real. The love affair between Alex and Henry is intense and romantic, made all the more so by the inclusion of their poetic emails that manage to be both funny and steamy. McQuiston’s strength is in dialogue; her characters speak in hilarious rapid-fire bursts with plenty of “likes,” “ums,” creative punctuation, and pop-culture references, sounding like smarter, funnier versions of real people. Although Alex and Henry’s relationship is the heart of the story, their friends and family members are all rich, well-drawn characters, and their respective worlds feel both realistic and larger-than-life.
A clever, romantic, sexy love story.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31677-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
Categories: GENERAL ROMANCE | ROMANCE | LBGTQ
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A young woman in hiding from the Russian mob faces a difficult decision when she falls in love with a cop.
Abigail, 28, lives alone in the bucolic hamlet of Bickford, Ark., in an isolated house, fortified with firearms, a state-of-the-art alarm system and a vicious dog named Bert. When the town’s genial police chief, Brooks, suspects Abigail is packing while shopping for gourmet groceries, his curiosity soon morphs into courtship. Although she finds herself drawn to Brooks and to his welcoming, bohemian family, Abigail dares not reveal that her real name is Liz—which is not the only way in which she appears to be Roberts’ answer to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Gifted with an eidetic memory, an IQ over 200 and an affinity for cool, calculated mayhem, Liz/Abigail is a skilled hacker and a highly paid security consultant. In her spare time she investigates the Russian mob and the crooked federal agents who are responsible for her current predicament; whenever possible, she throws virtual monkey wrenches into the mob’s Internet scams. When she witnesses an altercation between Brooks and the wastrel son of a local magnate, she’s thrust back into the horror of the last time she witnessed a crime. At 16, rebelling against an unloving, controlling mother, Liz and a girlfriend, Julie, visited a Chicago nightclub run by the Russian Mafia, where Ilya, son of gang kingpin Sergei, and Alexi, a cousin, seduced them with Cosmos. Later, at Alexi’s lakeside home, Liz was an unseen witness to a hit on Alexi by Sergei’s enforcers, who also killed Julie. Managing to escape, Liz was forced to run again when two dirty FBI agents destroyed her safe house and murdered her guards. A person of interest to both the Feds and the mob, she’s been on the lam for 12 years. Before they can marry, Brooks must help Liz come in from the cold.
A promising start to a series, provided Roberts can flesh out her derivative heroine.Pub Date: April 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-15912-1
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
Categories: GENERAL ROMANCE | ROMANCE
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