Humorous and witty and as entertaining as a good night out.
Andrews (Spring Fever, 2012, etc.) presents a delightful novel about love, revenge and more love.
Lifestyle blogger Grace Davenport Stanton is required to attend divorce group counseling sessions after driving her husband’s expensive Audi into their swimming pool in a fit of rage. But who can blame her for acting out? Worried about her husband’s whereabouts, Grace discovers Ben and her very nude and much younger assistant, J’Aimee, in a compromising position in the front seat of the car. After her tirade, Grace finds herself living in her mother Rochelle’s apartment above the family-owned bar; attending divorce counseling sessions mandated by Judge Cedric Stackpole; and, thanks to Ben, unable to access her blog and bank accounts. Forced to begin anew, Grace creates another blog, kicks into high gear taking on a renovation project, which she shares with her readers, and rescues an abandoned dog. She also bonds with fellow members of the divorce group over drinks at the bar, where they share their stories: Camryn, the take-no-prisoners television reporter; Ashleigh, the self-absorbed second wife of a plastic surgeon; Suzanne, a quiet and secretive teacher; and Wyatt, the only male of the group, who has a young son, an aging parent and a dying business to care for. While Grace and Camryn investigate their suspicions about the court-ordered sessions and their group facilitator, she and Wyatt become involved in a sometimes-rocky romance. The main characters are challenged by several misunderstandings, a couple of near-disasters and loads of obstacles. The author provides a wonderful blend of action, repartee and offbeat characters in a just-plain-fun story.
Humorous and witty and as entertaining as a good night out.Pub Date: June 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-01967-7
Page Count: 464
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
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
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
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