A delicious blend of romance and thriller that goes down smoothly.
An amoral grifter chooses the wrong person to victimize in this novel told from multiple viewpoints.
The titular character in this third book by O’Sullivan (The Patsy, 2018, etc.) is Olive Fairbanks. Olive, 26, is an intelligent, attractive wannabe writer who is tending bar to pay the bills in Los Angeles. She has always been unlucky in love until handsome Austin Jenkins walks into her bar, The Belly Flop. The chiseled Southerner sweeps Olive off her feet. Austin seems too good to be true, and he is. Con artist Becca Poe is blackmailing Austin with a video from high school. Her plan is to have Austin trick Olive to get inside the mansion of Barry Gant, the bar owner who has long been infatuated with the bartender. Becca has learned that Barry keeps hundreds of thousands of dollars in his home safe. This home invasion would be under the pretense of Austin wanting to open a bar and seeking Barry’s advice. Becca’s scheme works flawlessly. Her thuggish accomplice, Chet Watkins, knocks out Olive and kills Barry. Then Becca shoots Austin and Chet. She steals more than $600,000 but leaves behind $75,000 to fool investigators into thinking that the robbers, Olive, and Barry killed one another. Her big mistake is that Olive, who Becca thought was dying, survives Chet’s attack, and the bartender wants to discover the truth. O’Sullivan has created a winning protagonist in Olive, who grew up as a Nancy Drew fan and is determined to figure out how she was used in this scheme that left Barry dead. “Bad seed” Becca proves Olive’s ideal foil. Spineless Austin is caught in the middle, falling for Olive but doomed as Becca’s pawn. Employing multiple voices is O’Sullivan’s very effective narrative device in this engrossing tale. These include not only the three main characters, but also Richard, the desperate detective whom Olive hires to help her track down Becca. Having each describe the action helps readers better understand the players. Let’s hope the author brings back intriguing bartender/detective Olive for another case.
A delicious blend of romance and thriller that goes down smoothly.Pub Date: June 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9992956-3-2
Page Count: 279
Publisher: Big B Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
