McMillan (Waiting to Exhale, 1992, etc.) takes it easy with this tossed-together tale of a 42-year-old black, female professional who falls for a young Jamaican cook. The love story provides a suitable frame for the author's trademark charm and credible sense of black middle-class values, but sloppy prose and a single, rather solitary protagonist fail to give readers the synergistic magic of the earlier book. Stella Payne has it all—a charming 11-year-old son, a beautiful house north of San Francisco, and a high-paying job as a financial systems analyst. So why isn't she happy? For three years- -since her divorce from the man who talked her into abandoning her art-furniture business in favor of a more lucrative career—Stella has had no serious love interest in her life. When her son, Quincy, flies off to visit his father, workaholic Stella spontaneously signs up for nine days alone at a resort in Jamaica. The last thing she expects to find is an unquenchable passion for a 20-year-old chef's assistant; on her return home, she discovers that she can't quite relegate her happy thoughts of Winston Shakespeare to the vacation-fling portion of her memory bank. So Stella arranges for Winston to visit her in San Francisco—where the easygoing boy charms her son, her sisters, and her friends, and even talks Stella into dumping the stock exchange and returning to her artist's life. Despite Stella's repeated protests that Winston must be out of his mind, there are few serious barriers to this MayOctober love affair. Long, run-on, train-of-consciousness sentences give the impression less of the characters' mental states than of a hastily written novel. One hopes McMillan will follow her heroine's example and slow down a little on her next book. (First printing of 750,000; serial rights to People and Essence; Book-of-the-Month Club main selection; author tour)
Pub Date: May 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-670-86990-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
One hates to see Kayla, a good Nantucketer, take it on the chin like this. But, well, for a good story? Hey.
Follow-up to Hilderbrand’s debut, The Beach Club (2000), that summons up stronger plotting but is still sheer as a see-through bikini.
Hilderbrand’s steady flow of island detail impresses as a kind of consumer’s guide to Nantucket even as one’s hunger deepens for a Bret Eaton Ellis psycho amid the glitter or even an ax-wielding Russian student of Nietzsche out to murder a Monomoy millionaire. Can one really read 200-plus pages of this chicken salad? Three women in their 40s have met for 19 years on the Friday of Labor Day weekend for moonlit Champagne-and-lobster-tails, all-night nude swim, and heartfest. Kayla Montero, with four kids, fights her weight while married to her gorgeously handsome Brazilian husband, Raoul, a contractor with a ten-million-dollar house to build—and quite possibly mistresses to service. Antoinette Riley, who has been “having crazy sex,” is “dark-skinned like an Egyptian priestess” and has “the sexiest voice on the planet. . . dark and exotic, like sandalwood, like expensive chocolate.” A daughter, Lindsey, “the color of a wine cork” and given up for adoption as a baby, has tracked Antoinette (who has $30 million from Microsoft investments) down and wants to meet her the day after the swim party. Married Valerie Gluckstern, Nantucket’s top lawyer, has been having an affair “with someone they all know” and will tell all at the swim. Valerie brings a Methuselah of Laurent-Perrier Champagne to the swim, Antoinette a tub of lobster tails, Kayla a quart of raspberries and pale creamy Saint André cheese. Then Antoinette swims out, never returning. Police, coast guard, no Antoinette. Next day Kayla meets Lindsey, gives her the bad news, escorts her about. As it happens, Antoinette was pregnant by Kayla’s 18-year-old son, Theo! From there, everything dips deep into Peyton Place country, with Kayla turning adulteress as the muck rises.
One hates to see Kayla, a good Nantucketer, take it on the chin like this. But, well, for a good story? Hey.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-28335-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2002
A lovely, humorous ode to romantic comedies.
A film agency assistant follows all the rom-com rules in an attempt to save her job…and maybe fall in love in the process.
Evie Summers has always loved love—specifically in romantic comedies. She grew up dreaming of writing her own film, and her father was her biggest champion. But after his death, she lost her writing spark. Now she’s stuck toiling as an assistant at a film agency, waiting for the day she gets her big break and gets promoted to agent. It seems she may get her chance when her agency’s biggest and worst-behaved client, Ezra Chester, needs some motivation to produce the rom-com screenplay he promised. Ezra thinks rom-coms are trite and unrealistic, but he agrees to finish his screenplay if Evie proves to him that meet-cutes can lead to true love. Evie has to re-create some of her favorite rom-com scenes and report back to Ezra. Spilling orange juice on a stranger, à la Notting Hill? Check. Sharing a car with someone, just like in When Harry Met Sally…? Check. Staying at a charming cottage that seems to be straight out of The Holiday? Check. Evie tries it all, humiliating herself in front of the general public, including a cute but quiet single father and his precocious daughter. Meanwhile, she also has to help plan a bachelorette party and wedding for her hilariously high-maintenance bridezilla of a friend, but her dedication to work keeps getting in the way. But just like in all the best rom-coms, Evie might find true love where she least expects it. Evie is a scrappy, winning heroine whose decisions may occasionally be frustrating (as is the rom-com tradition, there are lots of miscommunications) but are always well intentioned. The references to classic films of the genre will delight rom-com fans, as will the sweet romance. The best scenes, though, are with Evie and her three best friends, who have the warmly mocking dynamic of friends in a Richard Curtis film.
A lovely, humorous ode to romantic comedies.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-54231-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
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