A funny, frank, and refreshingly mature take on the familiar will-they-or-won’t-they romance template.
A college hockey player finds his vow of celibacy tested when he meets the campus beauty.
This final installment of Kennedy’s (Bad Apple, 2018, etc.) Briar U trilogy focuses on a supporting character from the earlier volumes: hockey star Hunter Davenport. He’s so bitterly disappointed that Briar’s hockey team “didn’t make it to the national championship” that he’s decided to take a vow of sexual abstinence until the end of the season. It’s tough on him (“I take out all my sexual frustration on the ice,” he thinks, but readers won’t believe him). And his pledge doesn’t stop him from appreciating all the lovely women at campus parties. But in a psychology class, he meets smart, gorgeous Demi Davis. Demi immediately notices how handsome he is (“too attractive for his own good”), and soon she and Hunter are paired in a psychology experiment in which she plays the doctor and he the patient. In short order, strong sexual tension builds between the two. Hunter doggedly maintains his “monk” status even as the chemistry between them heats up. Demi admires his stunning looks and is amused by his quick wit (When setting up their next class meeting, he texts her: “Make sure you’re wearing tight spandex pants so I can objectify you”). But she has mixed feelings about Hunter (“He is either the best or the worst. I still haven’t decided”). Kennedy unfolds the story with smooth confidence and a great deal of sure-footed humor. The book’s whole supporting cast is well developed. And both Hunter and Demi are sparkling, enjoyable fictional creations, often unpredictable but also entirely believable, dealing with each other in the sexually frank manner that characterizes notable contemporary romance titles. Hunter’s resolve about his love life feels overdone in the novel’s final third, but the author’s prose is so energetic that only the pickiest readers will find it distractingly unrealistic— in fact, they may love the character all the more for it.
A funny, frank, and refreshingly mature take on the familiar will-they-or-won’t-they romance template.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9995497-6-3
Page Count: 422
Publisher: Elle Kennedy Inc.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 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
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
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