Rom-com fans will love the way this novel’s film references transform into an original, heartwarming love story.
Wish fulfillment ranks No. 1 in this romance inspired by a top 10 list of classic romantic comedies.
After years of playing the black sheep, Kensington Shaw is finally a leading lady with a man her parents can appreciate. Bradley Connors is handsome and dependable, and Kenzi is sure he’ll make a wonderful father. There’s only one problem: she’s still in love with her ex-boyfriend, Shane Bennett, who happens to be her new client at the advertising agency where she and Bradley work. Shane makes a poor first impression when he hijacks Kenzi’s presentation in front of her boss—especially when he suggests that her agency might not be the best match for his movie theater and restaurant chain. But an odd, secret clause in his contract requiring Kenzi to act out her favorite scenes from romantic movies brings out his softer side. Scenes from Sleepless in Seattle (1993), You’ve Got Mail (1998), and other films weave fluidly through the plot as Kenzi puts the events of her real life in the context of her fantasies. With Pretty Woman (1990), for example, Kenzi skips the part about being picked up on a street corner, but she and Shane have a wonderful moment in a shop and another at the symphony that evoke Julia Roberts at her most graceful. What’s fun about these scenes is that the shopkeepers and other strangers recognize Shane’s attempts at chivalry while Kenzi tries to play it cool for the sake of her fiance, thus validating her conflicted feelings. In the process, Kenzi’s movies help her deal with the resentment she feels for her own family. In one wicked scene, for example, she exacts revenge on her competitive sister-in-law, Ren, in the style of 27 Dresses (2008) after Ren steals her engagement-news thunder. It takes quite a few movies for Kenzi to sort out who’s Colin Firth or Hugh Grant to her Bridget Jones.
Rom-com fans will love the way this novel’s film references transform into an original, heartwarming love story.Pub Date: June 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-6368-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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