A charming summer romance that lacks depth but possesses heart.
A recently divorced woman finds love where she never expected it in this novel.
Annie Curtis is starting over. After 12 years of marriage, her husband reveals he is having an affair, and Annie finds herself in a new apartment, suddenly single at age 38. A college professor, she gets encouragement from a friend to open herself up to a new experience, and Annie plans a summer road trip. She checks in at a bed and breakfast in New Hampshire, run by Bill Martin and Mark, a friendly gay couple. On her first night in town, Annie stops by The Bookstore, a popular bar and cafe, and is immediately charmed by a local named Katie. They flirt, and when Annie returns to The Bookstore for a night of women’s music, she becomes even more enchanted with Katie. The two women strike up a companionship, and it turns out that Katie is Bill’s niece. When Bill offers Annie a chance to stay and work at the inn for the summer, Annie says yes to the adventure just as things are heating up with Katie. Katie has her own history of loss and heartache, but the two women develop a strong bond, enjoying the weather, the town, and their newfound love. It’s only as the season winds down that a serious incident outside of The Bookstore brings Annie and Katie even closer. Now Annie must decide if this is a temporary fling or the beginning of a new life. Annie and Katie’s romance is as easy-breezy as their afternoons on the lake, which makes for a pleasant read. While the novel takes some time to shed its monotone narration (“Annie was beside herself for a few weeks”; “Annie taught on a semester-by-semester contract”), it eventually warms into a more natural pace and voice. Imhoff (Mended Wings, 2017, etc.) delivers some beautifully sensual scenes, but the couple’s sex life otherwise happens behind closed doors. The drama near the end brings some much needed gravitas to the pair’s puppy love. Lesbian stereotypes abound (leather vests, an Indigo Girls concert), but Katie and Annie’s love is as tender as it is real.
A charming summer romance that lacks depth but possesses heart.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 178
Publisher: Cedar Lake Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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