A real page-turner that will make you glad of your own duller life.
Happy families don't stay happy for long in British author Lewis' world: here, the idyll of their charmed life is destroyed by an adulterous husband and a bullied teenage daughter.
Though their move to the Welsh coast seemed an impetuous plan of Jack's after he was laid off, Jenna has to admit she loves their beautiful new home, the quaint town, the closeness to the sea, and the help of her mother, Kay, who lives nearby. Jack and Jenna's new online publishing venture, which they're starting with the help of business consultant Martha Gwynne, will soon be up and running, so Jenna will be able to concentrate on her third novel, though that will never be easy with 5-year-old twins, rambunctious 8-year-old Josh, and 15-year-old Paige at home. Paige, popular and outgoing, has thrived at her new school until recently, when someone hacked her Facebook account and began posting vile remarks in her name. Now she's nearly shunned at school, and the bullying begins to escalate. Paige keeps quiet at home, not wanting to add to the domestic misery. Though Jenna has suspected it for a few weeks, Jack finally admits he's having an affair with Martha, and he's moving out. To her credit, Lewis does what novelists seldom do, filling Jenna and Jack's dialogue with just the kind of lusty anger and backbiting one would expect under the circumstance. Things get worse: Jack has embezzled tens of thousands of pounds from their clients, and Paige has been visiting suicide websites. The layers of abuse both Jenna and Paige endure can be overwhelming reading, but Lewis knows her audience—the wrongdoers get their comeuppance while our heroines somehow make out better than before.
A real page-turner that will make you glad of your own duller life.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-54953-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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