Although Baker gives lip service to the needs of children and birth parents, her sympathies clearly lie with her...
The title gives readers a clear idea what they’ll find in British magazine editor Baker’s first novel—chick-lit romance with kids thrown in.
Magazine editor Eve, 32, falls in love with photographer Ian after meeting with him on a story about his wife, a famous journalist whose popular columns chronicled her losing battle against cancer. Now a widower, Ian is devoted to parenting his three kids: 13-year-old Hannah, eight-year-old Sophie and Eve’s avowed favorite, five-year-old Alfie. When Eve moves in, she quickly learns that stepmothering complicates romance, especially when there’s an angry, resentful teenager like Hannah involved. Through her best friend Clare, a never-married single mom of 14-year-old Louisa, Eve is soon meeting at Starbucks with Clare—who hated her own stepmother—and Clare’s younger sister Lily, whose boyfriend has a three-year-old daughter he keeps on weekends. Chinese-American Melanie also joins the women for coffee and support dealing with lovers and children. Divorced from a hedge-fund mogul, Melanie has just begun her own online shopping site and is dating a genuinely sweet man whose ten-year-old daughter she has yet to meet but is already nervously obsessing about. Then there is Mandy, a little older and more working class. Divorced with three adolescent sons at home, Mandy now lives with a man with two teenagers of his own. But the novel’s heart lies with Eve and to a lesser extent Clare. Although Ian is a wonderful father and lover, things fall apart for Eve when she becomes pregnant and he’s not ready to add another child to the mix. Meanwhile Clare, who has built her life around raising Louisa without financial help, hears from Louisa’s father Will for the first time in 14 years. Now a married doctor, Will wants to establish a relationship with the daughter he’s never met, and Clare feels understandably threatened at Louisa’s enthusiastic embrace of Will and his family.
Although Baker gives lip service to the needs of children and birth parents, her sympathies clearly lie with her self-absorbed stepmothers.Pub Date: June 22, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-184035-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2010
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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