This sequel to Not a Day Goes By (2000) delivers plenty of catty dish with a dash of sentimentality. Fans of Harris, who...
Delicious diva Yancey Harrington Braxton’s grand scheme to make her showbiz comeback is complicated by her newly sprung jailbird mother—and a painful secret from the past.
Her career trajectory cooling off, actress/singer Yancey finds herself in Miami starring in a production of Dreamgirls, a gig that offers her a steady paycheck but nowhere near the adulation to which she feels entitled. Acutely aware that she is not getting any younger and contemplating selling the pricey New York City townhouse she can no longer afford, Yancey sees her luck improving when she meets oh-so-fine S. Marcus Pinkston outside a Miami club. Great in bed and loaded (he drives an Aston Martin, no less), S. Marcus certainly seems to be smitten with his new lady and even offers to boost her back on top by getting Yancey her own reality-show deal. Sweet! But while that is being worked out, and unbeknownst to Yancey, her mother Ava is released early from prison, where she was serving time for killing a man. A nasty piece of work who makes the self-centered Yancey seem like a kindergarten teacher, Ava claims she is eager to reconnect with her only child, but secretly plots revenge, blaming Yancey for ruining her life. She moves into her daughter’s house and enlists dimwitted fellow ex-con Lyrical and her drug-dealing thug boyfriend Donnie Ray to help with her plan. Meanwhile, Yancey learns that the daughter she gave up while in college has grown into teen singing sensation Madison B, a sweet girl raised well by Yancey’s ex. That Madison happens to be worth millions is not lost on Yancey, who tries to respect the girl’s privacy, while facing her many regrets. Madison aches for a mother’s love, but could she ever trust the woman who sat out the first 16 years of her life? Ava works her own angles, showing Yancey everything that a mother should not be.
This sequel to Not a Day Goes By (2000) delivers plenty of catty dish with a dash of sentimentality. Fans of Harris, who died in July, will lap it up.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4391-5890-6
Page Count: 438
Publisher: Karen Hunter Publishing/Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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