A sweet, sexy read with complicated, likable leads, a swoonworthy seaside setting, and a positive message about...
This enemies-to-lovers romance follows the relationship of an eager-to-please author and her artist neighbor in Bodega Bay, California.
Millie Hart, 33, is a New York Times–bestselling author—of romance, much to the chagrin of her estranged father, a bookseller. To satisfy him once and for all, she vows to write the next big literary classic and rents a coastal cottage for three months, accompanied only by her cat, Pop-Tart. Almost immediately, Millie finds herself in a battle of wits, and very loud music, with her handsome but irritating neighbor. Drake Branch uprooted his life—from city to hometown—after a motorcycle accident left him with only one arm. Despite a successful glass-blowing career and a cadre of supportive family and friends, Drake’s nightmares and triggering flashbacks persist. The arrival of an attractive, but stubborn, new neighbor doesn’t help his anxiety level. Though Millie finds herself stuck writing the kind of novel that’s serious but gloomy, a far cry from her usual happily-ever-afters, she quickly adapts to small-town life and its quirky cast. Thanks to the encouragement of Drake’s colleagues and his aunt Nikki, who owns the town’s romance bookstore, he starts to reconsider his neighbor, who shares his hatred of wearing headphones. Millie and Drake get cozy over a night of pizza, wine, and glass blowing, but when Millie’s father reappears in her life and the ghosts of Drake’s past return with a vengeance, will their love survive? Ewens (Tap, 2018, etc.) is a skilled storyteller, writing from both Millie’s and Drake’s perspectives and giving each distinctive personalities and struggles. Every character—Drake’s mentor, Esteban; Esteban’s college-bound daughter, Hazel; Millie’s best friend and literary agent, Jade—is thoughtfully imagined. Though the title is a bit misleading, as “blow” is also slang for cocaine, the chemistry is palpable, the plot points clear, and the subplot regarding the stigma against romance fiction and authors incredibly accurate.
A sweet, sexy read with complicated, likable leads, a swoonworthy seaside setting, and a positive message about relationships.Pub Date: June 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73232-163-2
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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