An intriguing but uneven opposites-attract tale.
In this novel, an American living abroad falls for a world-famous pop star.
Dylan Augustus comes from Chicago money and a family of achievers, but now he lives in Tokyo and has a contract gig coaching businesses (“helping investment bankers and consultants with their English PowerPoints”). In his spare time, he secretly works on his novels. When the 28-year-old writer visits Los Angeles for a cult film festival, a chance encounter at a Venice Beach coffee shop will change his life forever. Garland Fast is also 28 and her music—guitar, vocals, and songwriting—has taken her from poor Wisconsinite and fledgling teenage girl-group member to a superstar with sold-out stadium tours, real estate throughout the world, and never-ending cashflow. She uses the money to pay her loyal assistant, Alexis Fisher, and to support her mom, Barbara; her young niece, Emma; and her sister, Julie, a talented guitarist and bassist with a pattern of abusive relationships. After initially butting heads, Garland and Dylan connect over pizza and Game of Thrones marathons as well as a healthy dose of bedroom gymnastics. Could this be love? Dylan is besotted with the gorgeous Garland but worries he’s in over his head. Used to getting exactly what she wants when she wants it, Garland tries to give Dylan the world and doesn’t understand that he wishes to make his own way. And when Duchess Sugoi, Garland’s rival, sets her sights on Dylan, he wonders if his fling-turned-relationship is built to last. Readers will relish getting a behind-the-scenes look into the life of a music superstar: the perks of private jets, Centurion credit cards, and glamorous partnerships with cosmetic companies as well as the downsides of pop-star backbiting, relentless paparazzi, and a complete lack of privacy. Garland is a captivating, nuanced character, prone to deep introspection and temper tantrums—so much that Cairo’s novel, at least 100 pages longer than it needs to be, might have been more effective from her perspective rather than that of her boyfriend. Dylan often comes off as self-righteous, explaining movies and even music to a famous pop diva and her family and staff.
An intriguing but uneven opposites-attract tale.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2022
ISBN: 979-8986395609
Page Count: 393
Publisher: Richards & Jones
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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