Lightweight romantic farce, often quite funny, from the British author of For Better, For Worse (2001).
Bad boy bares bum. His girlfriend’s, that is—and it’s a fine sight to see.
Emily Miller (34) was decked out in a teeny-tiny red chiffon Santa suit that left nothing, including her bountiful breasts, to the imagination. No harm in letting her darling Declan O’Donnell, boyfriend of five years, take a snap or two with his new digital camera, was there? And how amusing of him to take a black marker and scribble HO HO HO across her flawless buttocks. She never dreamed that he would post the provocative result online for every lusty lad and wheezing pensioner alive to see. Emily is famous. Too bad the headmaster at the posh school where she teaches has also seen it: the photo has been splashed all over the tabloids, along with a candid shot of her in a tattered blue bathrobe, looking like a council-housing harlot. So she’s fired, and she’s furious. But Declan secretly hopes to make money from the “Saucy Santa” and make it up to Emily somehow, since his dot-com enterprises have all turned out to be dot-bombs. Porn is about the only thing that makes money on the Web these days, so porn it will be. Classy porn. Emily, holed up with flaky girlfriend Cara, has to listen to Cara twitter on about auras and feng shui and other New Age concepts that might help heal her friend’s wounded heart. She even enlists the help of her scruffily handsome colleague, Adam, a photographer for the local Hampstead newspaper that broke the story in the first place. Cara obviously has a crush on Adam—but later, when she happens to get close to the ever-seductive Declan amidst the steam and froth of a hot tub—why, she’s positively blowing bubbles. Then Adam spies Emily across a crowded room and he’s smitten. And it looks as if Emily is smitten right back.
Lightweight romantic farce, often quite funny, from the British author of For Better, For Worse (2001).Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-053214-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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