Mason (Society Girls, June 2005, etc.) adds a warm familial tone to the eccentric proceedings in this featherweight...
Single London party planner has mixed feelings when tapped to arrange a charity ball at the country estate she once called home.
Isabel “Izzy” Serranti has a cool job planning events, a preoccupation with her weight and a male best friend who may or may not be gay. She is also haunted by a childhood friendship that ended badly for no good reason she can think of. As a young girl she spent several magical years living in a cottage on the beautiful Pantiles estate in the English countryside. She and Pantiles heir Simon Monkwell were inseparable best friends until the day Simon mysteriously turned on her and initiated a bullying reign of terror that ceased only after her family moved away. Flash forward 15 years: Simon is all grown up, with a bad reputation as a heartless mergers-and-acquisitions shark. Isabel is both intrigued and filled with dread at the thought of revisiting the familiar estate to organize a circus-themed bash on its grounds. Simon himself is in America arranging a hostile takeover when she arrives, so she reconnects with his family, including his aged father Monty, handsome younger brother Will and sticky-fingered Aunt Flo. When the two finally meet, Simon is standoffish. After Isabel discovers that she might have accidentally ruined his latest business deal by slipping some crucial information about Simon to her caddish ex, she decides to help Simon save his business, along with his ancestral home. What follows is a very silly country weekend spent trying to win over assorted American investors as everything falls apart. An errant pet tarantula goes “walkabout,” a grumpy cook with issues disappears and would-be lovers find themselves locked in cupboards.
Mason (Society Girls, June 2005, etc.) adds a warm familial tone to the eccentric proceedings in this featherweight Brit-chick romp.Pub Date: Dec. 27, 2005
ISBN: 0-345-46956-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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