by Sameer Zahr ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 2020
While not every moment is captivating, this uplifting tale shows how ideas can transform lives.
A novel focuses on a spiritually ambitious power couple.
Peter Donovan is a 29-year-old stockbroker in New York City. In the opening pages, his 25-year-old wife, Amy, decides to leave him. She has taken up with a man in their apartment building. Peter uses this momentous event as an opportunity: He heads to a retreat in California. It is there that he learns to meditate and meets Stella Cornfield, an acquaintance of an investment banker. Stella is also recently single and on a spiritual journey of her own. When the two return to the East Coast, they connect and end up forming a couple. Both are successful and wealthy, yet they yearn for something more from life. They find themselves engrossed by the works of authors like Khalil Gibran and Neville Goddard. Both are also troubled by their former lovers. Amy seems bent on a downward spiral since her breakup with Peter and asks for help. Stella’s ex-boyfriend Marty Chen sues her on baseless grounds. Her lawyer demands that Marty donate $1 million to a charity of Stella’s choosing. Stella then decides to use the money to create something special with Peter. It is a decision that will ultimately benefit everyone. Zahr’s story is at its best when exploring the finer points of Peter’s and Stella’s beliefs. Goddard’s ideas receive particular attention and even influence Stella’s views on her health. Readers are shown firsthand just how one can take concepts and put them into action. But the dialogue that propels the tale tends to be less illuminating. Characters often express themselves with bland sentiments. For instance, Peter says of Amy early on: “I’m not eager to take her back nor do I miss her company.” At a later point, one character flatly asks another: “What are your plans for this weekend?” Nevertheless, the book makes philosophical concepts relatable. Though they exist in a work of fiction, the intriguing characters change in ways that demonstrate the true power of their convictions.
While not every moment is captivating, this uplifting tale shows how ideas can transform lives.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-951933-82-1
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Sameer Zahr
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Christina Lauren ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 10, 2018
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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