Strictly for fans—mostly under18—who can’t get enough of the Web site. Warning: Gushy, girlish prose throughout, with triple...
A twentysomething woman in New York . . . sound familiar? Not surprising.
Download Macromedia Flash Player 6 and you can check out Vivian Livingston on the Web at www.vivianlives.com. Tour her cute apartment, feed her cute dog, and rummage through her cute clutter. You can even click and flush her cartoon toilet or peek at her cool clothes! Vivian’s totally cool Web site gets more than six million hits a month and bristles with marketing links. Yes, Vivian has promotional deals with car companies, beauty products, trendy stores, girl magazines, and the greatest retail shrine of all, Bloomingdale’s. At least this pretend autobiography by Vivian’s amanuensis (and shameless shill) Sherrie Krantz doesn’t require that you provide your age, sex, and home address in order to read it. But we already know so much about Vivian: she went to Penn State, ended an abusive relationship with a frat hunk, moved to New York with her BFF (Best Friend Forever) after winning a songwriting contest, has a cool job as a glorified assistant at VH1, has straight and gay friends, can’t get her life together but has a lot of fun trying. Men: studly poet Patrick is great in bed but a cheater at heart, and tall handsome John, who’s like an investment banker or an attorney or something, is all wrapped up in himself. Work keeps Vivian busy, even if arrogant boss Zack won’t give her the promotion she deserves. Still, her next assignment is a plum: an all-star auto race in California. When she’s back in New York, a new romance blossoms with Jack, an Italian-American firefighter. Tragedy is averted when Vivian’s BFF’s stupid boyfriend accidentally sets fire to her apartment, but no one is hurt and the cute dog is rescued. Life goes on!!!
Strictly for fans—mostly under18—who can’t get enough of the Web site. Warning: Gushy, girlish prose throughout, with triple exclamation points, triple question marks, and emoticons.Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45354-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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