A little bit of thriller, a little bit of romance make this coming-of-age story a lot of fun.
The kidnapping of the daughter of a prominent Mexican banker forces the young woman to face uncomfortable truths about her sheltered upbringing.
Beautiful Ximena Villarreal, with curves in all the right places and a dancer’s legs, is practically Mexican royalty, the only daughter of one of the richest bankers in the country. She lives with few cares, insulated from the hard truths of the less fortunate, until one evening when her mother’s car is run off the road, their chauffeur killed, and Ximena kidnapped by a quartet of beastly criminals. Unfortunately for the band, just moments before her abduction, Ximena had reconnected with her dashing, judo-trained cousin, Alejandro Montalban, their short reunion reigniting a passion between them that spurs Alejandro to stage a dramatic rescue. These events force Ximena to look at her life anew and for the first time ask herself what she wants, and whether her boyfriend Tommy, with his ambition and model good looks, and her father, who wishes to move the couple to Spain, truly have her best interests in mind. Alejandro seems to offer an alternative, sharing with her his plans to create quality affordable housing for Mexico’s neediest. But he is her cousin, and a dark family secret may make any future together, as friends or more, impossible. In her novel, Galindo (Habitantes de Mi Tiempo, 2009) dresses up Ximena’s coming-of-age story with a distinctive Hispanic flair and culture, both in the opulence of its protagonist’s high-class upbringing and the natural beauty of the more rural areas outside of Mexico City, from the forests to the beaches. It’s as easy to fall in love with the country as it is Ximena herself. Her quirks make up for any immaturity, with her affinity for Tootsie Rolls with Champagne as charming as it is telling, and her bravery under the threat of violence and rape marking her as no pushover. Most of the characters in the novel are fairly one-note, from Ximena’s domineering father and manipulative boyfriend to the salivating kidnappers. But the interactions between Ximena and Alejandro shine, their rapport exuberant and flirty, allowing them to grow beyond the legs and abs that seem to draw the two together.
A little bit of thriller, a little bit of romance make this coming-of-age story a lot of fun.Pub Date: March 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61244-441-3
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Halo International Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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