A story that focuses on the idea of redemption through love and understanding.
In Oceanside, Washington, an injured veteran undergoing court-ordered therapy and community service after a drunken brawl finds purpose as he puts his war-induced demons to rest.
John Cade Lincoln Jr. joined the Army after a screaming match with his father, making it clear he wouldn’t be entering law school and joining the family law firm. Fast-forward nearly six years, and Cade is an angry veteran who's still reeling after having been injured and seeing his two best friends die in Afghanistan. He doesn’t want to do physical therapy, and he doesn’t want to go to counseling. When he's arrested following a drunken brawl, the judge—the mother of a vet who took his own life—orders him to do both as well as community service. Hope Goodwin has moved to Oceanside in an attempt to redefine her life after the loss of her twin brother, an Army Ranger, in the Afghan desert. She's a teacher and school counselor, and she gets to know Cade when they end up volunteering at the same animal shelter. A second plotline follows a handful of Hope’s students: Spencer, a geeky computer nerd, is infatuated with Callie, who’s on the dance team and dates the high school quarterback, Scott. Callie’s twin brother, Ben, is also on the football team, and when Callie discovers that he's been using drugs, she convinces Spencer to hack into his computer to try to figure out where they're coming from so she can stop him. Macomber has a staccato writing style that takes some getting used to, and her storytelling leans toward telling rather than showing, with characters who deviate only slightly from archetypes: the wounded vet, the woman who loves him, the lecherous female barfly, the bullying high school quarterback, the beautiful dance-squad girlfriend, the nerdy computer kid, etc.
A story that focuses on the idea of redemption through love and understanding.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-98481-8-843
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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