A spoiled rich girl’s wakeup call has an added twist in Schmidt’s first novel—the tale is designed to give women step-by-step instructions for establishing themselves in the world.
At only 23-years-old, Morgan Demarest is kicked out of her boyfriend’s apartment with nowhere to go. Following the author’s introduction, Morgan quickly asserts herself as a shopaholic with a penchant for designer stilettos. It’s then that Demarest meets Divinity, her sassy fairy godmother who won’t tolerate Morgan’s whiny attitude. Divinity guides Morgan to a more purposeful life, and the story serves as an example for how women can give their lives a makeover. The book intertwines Morgan’s journey to find her life’s passion (an event planner, as it turns out) and helping women find their own life’s passion. Unlike most mundane self-help books, the story shows women how to reach their dreams without actually telling them. The “footnotes” at the end of each chapter further emphasize this point without preaching. Each footnote summarizes the lesson Morgan learned, including goal setting, finding a mentor, journaling, handling conflicts and making positive financial decisions. Although the story illustrates a person’s potential well, some aspects of the book are overdone. The characters don’t feel like average women; almost everyone starts a successful company, including Morgan, who at the end is on her way to being a very successful event planner. Morgan discovers her passion through her job at an art gallery, and, with advice from her no-nonsense fairy godmother, she figures out how to run her life without having money handed to her. Morgan’s journey is compelling, but the women’s desperate need for stilettos is exhausting. Despite these setbacks, the light-hearted story inconspicuously motivates women to do something with their lives. A subtle blend of counseling, motivation and entertainment that will make any woman buy the hottest stilettos she can find and reach for her dreams.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0615494784
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Glamour Press House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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