A glitzy romp that features suburban wives making unconventional—and haphazardly disastrous—attempts to break out of the...
A modern comedy of manners set in a posh Atlanta suburb follows a group of married women.
The latest novel from Pullen (Regrets Only, 2016) opens with a fun, fizzy premise that reads like something straight out of Boccaccio’s Decameron: Some wives in the well-to-do Atlanta suburb of Sugar Mills are, for varying reasons, mildly unhappy in their blissful marriages. Live-and-let-live Jess Rodriguez, a presentation editor for a management consulting firm, loves her husband, Tom, and her 9-year-old daughter, Mina—but even she can’t deny that a certain spark has been missing for a while. PTA goddess Maizy Henriksson, veteran of “endless Tupperware containers of brownies and cookies and muffins whenever the occasion demanded it,” is likewise suffering from a sense of malaise that isn’t helped by the fact that everybody considers her the reliable one. Ambitious Delia Cargill, a whiz at direct-sales house gatherings and other retail pyramid schemes, is desperate to move up in Sugar Mills society and the ranks of the Sugar Mills Country Club. She ingratiates herself to glamorous club members like two-time women’s NCAA tennis champion Carras Lightbourne Prather, who’s got a private dissatisfaction of her own: the long struggle she and her “sweet, unremarkable” husband have endured in their efforts to conceive a child, encompassing “two years of folk wisdom, Internet remedies, injections and very expensive failed IVF cycles.” There’s a lot of inertia and frustration in this “sleepy, affluent suburb, where the biggest conflicts were about trim paint color.” These residents are all thrown into delightful turmoil by Belinda Hayes-Currington, “one of those super-moms who served on every committee imaginable for her three gorgeous, towheaded children,” who’s recently started taking private tennis lesson from hunky, 20-something freelance instructor (and, it turns out, freelance gigolo) Parker Yung. The appearance of Parker has fired Belinda’s once-oblivious husband, Orson, with renewed romantic zeal. This is a classic comedic development that Pullen—a veteran of this kind of smart, sharp Jilly Cooper–style, guilty-pleasure fiction—manages to near perfection. In quick, confident strokes, she draws her characters in all their conflicting natures, from crass ambition to hapless confusion and everything in between. Even the author’s less savory characters—Delia at her most self-absorbed, for instance, or Belinda virtually every time she opens her mouth—come across as entirely, believably human. The beefcake at the heart of the chaos, gorgeous Parker, ends up having refreshing extra dimensions as well. And as Pullen throws more and more complications into the misadventures of her characters (who end up feeling like they’re on “a rollercoaster ride intended for someone else”), hurdles that grow to include much darker motives, bribery, and extortion, the narrative stays perfectly on point and controlled. The author systematically dismantles the contentment of her very comfortable characters while also keeping the story bouncing with zippy, involving dialogue and a fine sense of dramatic pacing.
A glitzy romp that features suburban wives making unconventional—and haphazardly disastrous—attempts to break out of the safe patterns of their lives.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Freshwater Ink
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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