A perfect fit for the romance lover’s beach bag.
Bestseller Andrews introduces Greer Hennessy, a third-generation worker in the film industry, whose difficult background and current job trigger a flood of problems.
Greer’s personal life is a mess, and her professional one is no laughing matter, either. Following an incident involving a fire on her previous job, the location scout/manager is hoping to redeem herself working for Hollywood’s newest golden boy, director Bryce Levy. Although the script for his latest movie is vague and ever changing, Greer finds him the perfect location, a small dot on the map along Florida’s Gulf Coast fraught with heat, humidity, palmetto bugs, and little else. Economically stagnant Cypress Key has seen better days, and Greer assumes its citizens will jump at the opportunity to make some quick cash and spotlight their town. The area also features an old ramshackle building along the waterfront that’s perfect for the final scene—so long as Greer can secure permission to blow the erstwhile Cypress Key Casino to smithereens. Mayor Eb Thibadeaux (who apparently emulates Dr. Seuss’ Bartholomew Cubbins in the hat-wearing department: he’s also co-owner of a local motel, a realtor, grocery store and boat repair shop owner, and town engineer) is skeptical about the benefits of having a film crew invade the town, and he’s definitely against Greer’s plans for the historic structure. But he’s attracted to Greer, and she to him. A romance quickly develops, then ebbs and flows as a tidal wave of complications creates misunderstandings between the two—and there are plenty as Andrews floods the story with several secondary characters and subplots. The author uses her tried-and-true formula to good effect, though. As in many of her preceding novels (Save the Date, 2014, etc.), Andrews masterfully creates an entertaining story filled with likable characters and a few lightweight, havoc-wreaking troublemakers. Although far-fetched, it’s entirely fun.
A perfect fit for the romance lover’s beach bag.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-06593-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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