An admittedly engaging if often melodramatic tale: high-brow soap.
Overboiled historical romance set during the London Blitz.
Ostensibly the story of Maggie Dunlap, British newcomer Hely (a.k.a. Lady Sally Collins) introduces a vast catalogue of characters, most unlikable. Though not yet 18, gentle Maggie is hired as a nursery maid for the Dulcimer family. Her father is the tyrannical keeper of the Dulcimer’s Scottish lodge, and Maggie’s journey south to the Sussex estate will save her from drudgery and beatings. Lord and Lady Dulcimer are kind enough, but their son Dart is a bit of a cad, well matching the temperament of his brother’s widow, and his sometimes lover, Antonia. It is Antonia’s children that Maggie looks after, including oldest Abby, who takes a particular shine to Maggie. When Dart drops Antonia, she rebounds with a marriage to David Vorst, ten years her junior and cousin to the Dulcimer family. At the beginning of the Blitz, it is decided that Antonia’s children (along with a whole cadre of related children, nannies and the odd governess) will stay with the Vorsts in America, and Maggie goes along. Maggie blossoms in America, becomes thinner, more confident, even learns how to drive a car. Meanwhile, back home, David Vorst joins the Royal Air Force, while trying to keep managerial reign on the London Vorst Hotel, which older brother Conway wants to steal away from him. Maggie is forced back to England (despite her rescue of Abby from a kidnapping plot!) when an evil nanny has it out for her. Later, she joins the women’s branch of the RAF, where she’s assigned on a secret mission with David Vorst, by now her secret love object.
An admittedly engaging if often melodramatic tale: high-brow soap.Pub Date: May 20, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-30532-X
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
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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