A heartwarming story about staying true to yourself whatever others might think.
A struggling actor takes a life-changing road trip with his best friend in this novel.
A childhood accident left Otto Digmore with burns over half of his face, but that hasn’t stopped him from pursuing his dream of becoming an actor. Conventional beauty may be a more prized commodity in Hollywood than talent (Otto doesn’t lack the latter), but he’s managed to land a supporting role on a middling sitcom. Professional success has arrived, but personal happiness is elusive, not the least because the lonely, gay Otto feels pressure to keep his sexuality under wraps. When his show is abruptly canceled, it looks like his career is about to stall just as it’s getting started. An unconventional script offers an opportunity to turn things around, and Otto snags an audition with the A-list director. The only problem? It’s in New Orleans. So Otto and his best friend (and ex-boyfriend), Russel Middlebrook, hit the road. Hartinger (The Road to Amazing, 2017, etc.) returns to the familiar territory of outsiders trying to find their places in a world that prizes conventionality, though this time the milieu is high-gloss Hollywood rather than high school. Fans should be pleased to see the return of Russel, prominently featured in several of the author’s previous works, in a supporting role. But the real star here is Otto, a compelling and sensitively drawn character in his own right. He’s sympathetic but flawed, vacillating between proud self-confidence and nagging self-doubt. A few too-convenient plot developments, like a hitchhiker who teaches Otto a valuable lesson and a threatening redneck in a pickup truck, verge on cliché. But as Russel—a screenwriter steeped in film trivia—points out, this cross-country journey is supposed to evoke classic road-trip movies. In this frank and funny tale, Hartinger does an especially fine job of handling Otto’s complex feelings for Russel without falling back on a generic rom-com happy ending. At times the story feels a bit slight—more like a tale for teens rather than adults—but as a fresh take on the theme of achieving self-acceptance in a world that discourages difference, it delivers.
A heartwarming story about staying true to yourself whatever others might think.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5428-1033-3
Page Count: 228
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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