An entertaining but not very memorable take on modern love and life in the Big Apple.
Pekkanen’s (Skipping a Beat, 2011, etc.) latest showcases her penchant for exploring relationships wrapped in big-city trappings.
Cate, the features editor for a big-time New York–based women’s magazine called Gloss, and Renee, an associate editor at the same publication, share an apartment the size of a postage stamp with oft-absent model Naomi. When Naomi ditches the pair, hunky writer Trey asks if his seriously damaged younger sister, Abby, can move into Naomi’s room while he’s on the road. Trey, who picks up National Magazine Awards as casually as after-dinner mints, happens to be the hottest thing around, both professionally and as dating material. Renee had an awkward couple of dates with Trey and nurses the hope that she will one day win him over. In the meantime, she’s trying hard to win the position of beauty editor at Gloss but is pitted against two others for the promotion. Determined to bag the job, Renee starts taking the diet pills that Naomi left behind in an attempt to lose weight, while Cate struggles with trying to prove her mettle in the magazine business to a lecherous and demanding boss. All three women harbor secrets that could bring them public humiliation and/or turn their worlds upside down, and Pekkanen’s story traces the ways in which the three work toward making themselves whole while forging a friendship that will outlast disappointments in life and love. A bit heavy on clichés and coincidences, this is a breezy but uninvolving read that revolves around an industry rife with job insecurity. Pekkanen peppers the book with celebrity names and pop-culture references and loads down her prose with unnecessarily detailed descriptions of the characters’ hair, clothes and makeup, but she redeems herself with an unexpected ending. Good fun overall, though the speed at which the female characters bond rings false.
An entertaining but not very memorable take on modern love and life in the Big Apple.Pub Date: April 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1254-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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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