A light and fluffy confection that’s a perfect read for a holiday break.
Passey’s (The Tree Keeper’s Promise, 2016, etc.) latest Christmas tale is a lighthearted romance inspired by Charles Dickens’ classic holiday novel.
Eleanor Fooge is running her grandmother’s fudge business in Pine Creek, Colorado, and it’s not going well. The company is losing money, and Eleanor’s control issues have alienated her business partner. When Eleanor’s angry opinions about charity go viral, the business’s reputation suffers. She’s seen as a classic Scrooge despite her strong aversion to her name’s being compared to Dickens’ famous literary character’s. Enter Cam Wilson, a consultant whom Eleanor brought in to help save the business. He had a crush on her back in high school, years ago, and he’s retained his youthful good looks and charming personality—and Eleanor takes notice. He’s also smart enough to recognize that although Eleanor can effectively make the hard decisions required to save the company, her temperament is unpredictable. She also treats her employees terribly, going so far as to force them to work on Christmas. In addition, her hatred of all things Scrooge causes her to pass up good business opportunities, such as selling fudge at a local theater company’s sold-out performances of A Christmas Carol. She just wants to save the business before her grandmother finds out about the trouble. Cam wants to do his job, but he also finds himself falling for Eleanor all over again. Passey’s spin on the Dickens tale is as sweet as the fudge that Eleanor dishes up throughout the novel. Eleanor’s transformation is expected but enjoyable, and Passey makes a good observation about Scrooge himself: “he’s generous and kindhearted by the end. But no one…wants to give him that credit. Once a miser, always a miser.” The author’s prose flows nicely, and the chemistry between Cam and Eleanor is a consistent treat. There are no steamy love scenes along the way, but Cam’s willingness to lay everything on the line for Eleanor is a Christmas gift that romance fans will want to unwrap.
A light and fluffy confection that’s a perfect read for a holiday break.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9909840-8-5
Page Count: 195
Publisher: Winter Street Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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