A friends-to-lovers slow burner that fizzles when the romance hits.
When a guarded real estate analyst and her flirty co-worker find themselves working together to land a lucrative client, they realize their feelings might be more than a simple cubicle crush.
Analyst Cadence Lim is used to taking risks at work, but she's vowed never to risk her heart for top-selling broker and serial bachelor Matt Escanilla. For the five years that Cadence has worked for San Francisco’s Prism Realty, gorgeous Matt has been a welcome reprieve in an office where she is constantly passed over for promotions. His small favors and coffee runs have become a staple of her day, as have the butterflies she feels every time he sticks his head over her cubicle. Much to Cadence's chagrin, her close friendship with Matt has even sparked a flurry of office nicknames for them, including “Asian Jim and Asian Pam” after the characters from The Office. While Cadence would love to ditch her icy exterior and just date Matt, she refuses to invest her heart in a relationship she knows won’t last. Matt is one meeting away from sealing a deal with elusive entrepreneur Percy Ma, and he’s a shoo-in for a promotion to his and Cadence’s hometown of Los Angeles, also known as the land of Cadence’s unresolved family drama. Yet when their boss ensures that a trip to LA to meet Percy can work out well for both of them, Cadence and Matt soon find themselves devoid of any HR restrictions to hold their attraction at bay. Tieu’s second novel, after The Donut Trap (2021), is at its best when the slow burn is still sizzling. Once Matt and Cadence embrace their desires, the passion falls flat and their credibility as best friends feels questionable. Cadence often seems more aggravated than charmed by Matt’s immature behavior, calling him “annoying,” “irritating,” and “a baby” on multiple occasions. Matt’s grating selfishness and Cadence’s constant aversion to friendliness dampen their union, and readers may find it difficult to root for a relationship so fraught with inertia.
A friends-to-lovers slow burner that fizzles when the romance hits.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-306984-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.
The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.
Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead.
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757901
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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