A smartly written comedy that cheekily suggests recovery may not be for everyone.
A witty heroine with a crippling case of obsessive-compulsive disorder is at the center of this gemlike debut—think The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time thrown into the world of chick-lit.
Grace Vandenburg, 35, lives in a highly organized flat in Melbourne, Australia. Her morning routine goes something like this: While showering, each limb is scrubbed ten times; hair is dried with 100 strokes under the blow dryer; and teeth require 160 strokes with the toothbrush. Grace owns ten pairs of pants and ten skirts. She no longer drives because she can’t take her eyes off the speedometer, and there is a complicated algorithm dictating the number of bites she takes at each meal. Her life is ruled by the reassuring order of numbers, but her compulsions prevent her from forming attachments to others. That is until she meets Seamus at the grocery store (when at the checkout she discovers she has an impossible nine bananas, she steals one from his cart). A sexy, gentle man, attracted to Grace’s considerable charm, Seamus is perplexed by her mysterious behavior (and the framed photograph of Tesla on her nightstand), but the sexual chemistry is enough to keep the questions at bay. When Grace comes clean, Seamus convinces her that she deserves a happy life. Soon she is traveling down the usual road to recovery: meds and therapy. Grace stops counting, but she also stops enjoying life, gains weight and could care less about sex. Whereas at one point every moment of her day was busy, now weeks go by offering little but a change in the TV schedule. This romantic comedy weighs the value of a normal life against the hidden potential in a life of dysfunction. At the book’s close, it’s up to Seamus to accept Grace for who she is.
A smartly written comedy that cheekily suggests recovery may not be for everyone.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-158257-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
To her usual mix of love, mystery, and passion, Roberts (Sanctuary, 1997, etc.)—author of 115 romancers in some 17 years—adds Renaissance art and a decidedly Medici-like family: the Joneses of Maine. Dr. Miranda Jones, nearly six feet with flaming red hair and a glacial reserve, is an archeometrist who specializes in the analyzing and dating of Renaissance bronze sculpture. Miranda hopes to secure a world-class reputation for herself by authenticating a 15th-century statue of the Dark Lady, one of the mistresses of Lorenzo the Magnificent, as the undiscovered work of a young Michelangelo. Miranda's mother, Dr. Elizabeth Standford-Jones, the emotionally remote director of the Standjo art lab in Florence, has summoned her daughter from the family's Victorian cliffside home in Jones Point, Maine, to test the statue. Meanwhile, Miranda's father, equally remote, is an archaeologist who spends more time at his digs than at home. In fact, no one in the Jones family has made a successful run at marriage, a failure that Miranda and her alcoholic brother Andrew call the Jones curse. As for the statue, when it's discovered to be a fake, Miranda sets out to prove that someone stole the original. In this she's helped by gorgeous art thief Ryan Boldari (half-Italian, half-Irish), who's come to Jones Point to steal yet another bronze, which also turns out to be a forgery. Ryan's plan had been to use Miranda as a pawn, but now, naturally, he finds himself falling hard for her. While the two search for bronzes, a standard-issue romance-novel psychotic is stalking them. Most readers will twig to the killer's identity: Here, as always, Roberts's sexual tension is more compelling than her suspense. Perhaps it's time to take a sabbatical from the pink sweatshop and turn her considerable wit and narrative skills to a more original piece of work.
Pub Date: March 23, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-14387-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1998
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