A great choice for a weekend read.
Can an artist who's afraid of passion find his muse in a gun-shy wedding planner? Will a town built around romance inspire them to push through their boundaries?
Pallas Saunders owns a business throwing elaborate theme weddings, but her ambition has never allowed much time for romance of her own—especially since Weddings in a Box is struggling. Artist Nick Mitchell is biding his time until he leaves California for Dubai to start working on a two-year commission. It's not the best time for either of them to start a relationship, but they find themselves attracted to each other. Standing in the way is also the fact that Pallas and Nick both have deeply damaged relationships with their families. Nick's father is a famous artist whose affair led Nick's mother to raise another woman's child as her own. As a result of his parents’ deception (and having borne witness to his mother's one-sided devotion to his dad), Nick believes that while romance, companionship, and sex are fine, passion is dangerous. His dalliance with Pallas is safe because it has an expiration date. Pallas, on the other hand, hasn't pursued romance because she's been committed first to school and then to her career. She's also had to dodge her mother's expectation that she'll come to work at the family's bank. Aside from her career path, she's always needed to earn her mother's love, and that baggage seems to carry over to potential suitors. There's a lot to like about this first book in Mallery's new series, Happily Inc., about a California desert town that's known as a wedding destination. The romance is sweet and hot, the writing is quick and easy, and Mallery (A Million Little Things, 2017, etc.) begins to lay the foundation for her series, building the stories of Nick's brothers and the women in Pallas' group of friends. In fact, the starring relationship in the book is really between Pallas and her girlfriends.
A great choice for a weekend read.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-373-79933-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harlequin
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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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