A triumphant series launch with an appealing couple that’s sure to garner return readers.
A college student becomes drawn to an enigmatic man whose startling secret may be putting her in mortal danger in this supernatural-infused debut romance.
Twenty-something Gwen Adams hasn’t had a serious romantic relationship in several years. This may change when she meets Alexander Prescott, with whom she feels a connection. Alexander notices it, too, but he has his eye on Hannah Kinsley, a senator’s daughter and Gwen’s chum at Verona Beach Community College in Florida. He believes it’s his fate to be with Hannah, as she’s a dead ringer for his former love, Eva. But he can’t ignore his fondness for Gwen, who soon begins dating her close friend Kyle “Ky” Harper. When Alexander signs up for college courses to be near Hannah, he winds up in her acting class, which Gwen is likewise taking. Unexpectedly, he and Gwen earn romantically linked roles in a play, sparking steamy rehearsals and unmasked envy from Ky. But Alexander has a secluded past and is covertly working on a “mission” (details initially unknown). He suspects someone of stalking his family, including his billionaire entrepreneur father, Eli. Unfortunately, he also fears his association with Gwen could make her the culprit’s eventual target. Though it’s apparent the Prescotts are supernatural (Alexander refers to humans as distinct from his family), Westbay’s series opener centers on the couple’s romance. This involves mutual ogling, but the story gradually explores the engaging characters’ rich backgrounds. Hannah, for one, has a reason for “stealing” Gwen’s potential dates while Gwen endured a tragedy in high school. Intimate moments between Alexander and Gwen are tantalizing and, most impressively, offer little physical interaction. For example, the two, during a scene dramatization, get very close—Alexander staring “ravenously at her lips”—before the director/playwright interrupts. Readers learn early what Alexander is, but his specific origin and the “resources” he wants remain a mystery until later. The final act accommodates plot reveals and the bulk of the action, ending on a blistering cliffhanger.
A triumphant series launch with an appealing couple that’s sure to garner return readers.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9996065-0-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Quadratic Pie Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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