A charming tale of marriage, motherhood, an extended family, and a royal one.
Having a fiance/baby daddy who’s a relative of the royal family ratchets up a young woman’s stress level as she makes plans to get married and give birth in this chick-lit romp.
In Dineen’s (Wilhelmina and the Willamentte Wig Factory, 2015, etc.) first sequel, Mimi’s fiance, Englishman Elliot Fielding, is a bestselling author and the future Earl of Houndstoothbury on the Thames. “That’s not really his title,” the bride-to-be explains, but she’s forgotten exactly what it is. Thirty-five-year-old Mimi—“Meems” to friends and family—has a lot on her mind, including being pregnant, finalizing plans for both her church wedding and the reception in a sister’s palatial backyard, and meeting stuffy future in-laws Archibald and Victoria. Intimidated Mimi likens Archibald’s bearing to someone who’s caught a hint of Limburger, and she calculates that Victoria’s earrings probably cost more than her own 6-year-old red Honda. Meems also meets Elliot’s sister Philippa, aka “Pippa.” Pippa’s apparent gift of having ties to the spirit world delights the bride-to-be; Pippa may even be a match for Mimi’s former beau, Richard Bingham. Once married, life hardly slows for Meems, what with shopping for an opulent home in a tony suburb of Chicago (now that “money isn’t an issue”), hiring a nanny, and dealing with a tongue-clucking decorator. While pregnant, Mimi often focuses on food cravings, which run the gamut from french fries to Vosges-Haut truffles. But after her daughter is born, her thoughts switch to the joy and responsibility of motherhood. Emphasized along the way are the importance of giving back to the community and the values of friendship, family, and forgiveness. Although primarily a humorous book, it tackles homelessness, significant physical illness, and postpartum depression. References to food and weight seem overdone, and Mimi’s anxiety about aliens can grow tiresome. But it’s a fun book, written in an entertaining way and with lively characters, especially Mimi, who, confessing to a “love of all things, Sophie Kinsella,” names her baby Sophie.
A charming tale of marriage, motherhood, an extended family, and a royal one.Pub Date: April 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5327-6612-1
Page Count: 330
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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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