A sugar-and-spice toy for Maeve Binchy fans.
Owens made bestsellerdom in Ireland with this debut that intertwines the stories of the various customers of a small Belfast restaurant/café.
Daniel and Penny Stanley run Muldoon’s, which had belonged to Penny’s parents. A cast of regular—and occasional—patrons frequent Muldoon’s for breakfast, lunch, and baked specialties, in particular the cherry cheesecake (recipe included). Brenda Brown, an eccentric young artist whose flat is next door to the restaurant, writes fan letters to Nicholas Cage and paints art that doesn’t sell. Bookstore owner Henry Blackstock, partial to Muldoon’s breakfasts, allows his wife to destroy his beloved garden so she can build a conservatory for her literary club. Ample Sadie Smith, who breaks her frequent diets at Muldoon’s, suspects that her husband, the builder of the Blackstock conservatory, is cheating on her while she tirelessly cares for his aging parents. Clare Fitzgerald, a publishing executive in New York who lived in Brenda’s flat as a student, met the love of her life at Muldoon’s, lost contact through a freak accident (shades of An Affair to Remember) and has returned to search for him. At the center, Daniel and Penny are in a marital crisis that threatens the future of both their marriage and their restaurant. Miserly Daniel refuses to have children and cares only about the business. Penny, emotionally exhausted, begins an affair with a customer, a real-estate agent who inadvertently drops a bombshell about Daniel’s past. Meanwhile, Henry falls in love with the recently divorced florist across the street; Sadie catches her swinish husband in bed with his skinny mistress, who used to be Brenda’s boss; Clare buys a painting from Brenda, whose flat then burns up in a fire that also destroys Muldoon’s; and Daniel saves Penny and realizes that, although he married her for the restaurant, he does love her . . . .
A sugar-and-spice toy for Maeve Binchy fans.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2005
ISBN: 0-399-15265-2
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
Romance and melodrama mix uneasily with mass murder.
An 18-year-old Polish girl falls in love, swoons over a first kiss, dreams of marriage—and, oh yes, we are in the middle of the Holocaust.
Jenoff (The Ambassador’s Daughter, 2013, etc.) weaves a tale of fevered teenage love in a time of horrors in the early 1940s, as the Nazis invade Poland and herd Jews into ghettos and concentration camps. A prologue set in 2013, narrated by a resident of the Westchester Senior Center, provides an intriguing setup. A woman and a policeman visit the resident and ask if she came from a small Polish village. Their purpose is unclear until they mention bones recently found there: “And we think you might know something about them.” The book proceeds in the third person, told from the points of view mostly of teenage Helena, who comes upon an injured young Jewish-American soldier, and sometimes of her twin, Ruth, who is not as adventurous as Helena but is very competitive with her. Their father is dead, their mother is dying in a hospital, and they are raising their three younger siblings amid danger and hardship. The romance between Helena and Sam, the soldier, is often conveyed in overheated language that doesn’t sit well with the era’s tragic events: “There had been an intensity to his embrace that said he was barely able to contain himself, that he also wanted more.” Jenoff, clearly on the side of tolerance, slips in a simplified historical framework for the uninformed. But she also feeds stereotypes, having Helena note that Sam has “a slight arch to his nose” and a dark complexion that “would make him suspect as a Jew immediately.” Clichés also pop up during the increasingly complex plot: “But even if they stood in place, the world around them would not.”
Romance and melodrama mix uneasily with mass murder.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7783-1596-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Macomber’s writing and storytelling deliver what she’s famous for—a smooth, satisfying tale with characters her fans will...
When Libby Morgan is expecting to be named partner of her law firm but instead gets laid off, she’s shocked and angry, but it may prove to be just what she needs to create the life she deserves.
Libby’s whole life has been devoted to making partner, working as hard as possible to hit the mark that will make her feel like a success and to live up to the promise she made to her dying mother as a young teen. So when she not only doesn’t get the coveted partner position, but is fired despite all her talent, effort and hard work, everything changes. Libby never sets out to find her center or discover what truly matters; somehow, though, as her job hunt encounters one dead end after another, it happens anyway. Living on a dwindling severance, she first joins the gym, then discovers the yarn shop on Blossom Street. But it’s when she starts rocking the preemies at the nearby hospital that things really get interesting. Things like meeting the handsome pediatrician, Phillip, and actually taking time to smell the roses, knit the yarn, connect with old and new friends, and invest emotionally in the people around her—including a troubled young teen with an unsettling secret. So what happens when her new life is in place and her old profession comes calling? Macomber’s newest book takes her fans back to the popular Blossom Street, with the familiar characters and businesses that populate the series. Best-selling Macomber became famous for her romantic fiction, though she seems to have taken more of a women’s fiction tone with some recent titles, and this book falls into that category. The romance is integral to the plot, but Libby’s journey is more about self-discovery and understanding what "a good life" truly means for her, while opening her heart to other damaged characters in the story broadens her understanding of love and purpose.
Macomber’s writing and storytelling deliver what she’s famous for—a smooth, satisfying tale with characters her fans will cheer for and an arc that is cozy, heartwarming and ends with the expected happily-ever-after.Pub Date: April 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-345-52881-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2013
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