A feel-good holiday romance.
A miraculous Christmas tree farm brings a couple together in Passey’s (Mothering through the Whirlwind, 2015) novel.
Young, single mother Angela Donovan takes her 8-year-old daughter, Caroline, to Shafer Tree Farm in small-town Massachusetts, trying to take her own mind off the decidedly un-festive state of their lives. She’s strapped for rent money and $1,000 in debt, but wants to ignore all that so Caroline can have some kind of traditional Christmas. At the farm, she meets Mark Shafer, a handsome young man who’s set to become its new owner; when she notices him, her first thought is “Attractive. Not what I need right now.” Meanwhile, the farm’s current owner—Mark’s grandfather, “Papa” Shafer—promises little Caroline that if they “put up one of these Shafer trees and believe,” then she’ll have “a Christmas miracle.” Mark is immediately attracted to Angela, but he has his own problems; he’s been offered a very lucrative deal to sell the tree farm to corporate interests, but Papa is sure the deal would make wood chips out of the trees “faster than that little BMW of yours can get you to Boston.” Passey fairly briskly sets up a standard inspirational-romance plot, with a conflicted couple that may end up being each other’s salvation and a wise old man assuring everybody that there’s more to life than what we can see. However, the author saves the material from being completely derivative through the dialogue and chemistry of her two main characters. Mark, for example, has all the outward trappings of a simplistic jerk, but never actually is one, and Angela’s emotional shifts are conveyed crisply and believably. Passey successfully complicates the path of true love with plot turns that feel organic, not manipulative or contrived. Some secondary characters feel a bit simplified, such as Mark’s girlfriend, Natalie (“I love you,” he says, and one of her replies is “I guess you do”). But the novel’s climax delivers warm, sentimental memories of Christmases past.
A feel-good holiday romance.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9909840-6-1
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Winter Street Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
