Lacks the dash, verve, and clarity of quality historical romance. Rafael Sabatini, where are you when we really need you?
Donati’s sequel (after Into the Wilderness, 1998) to James Fenimore Cooper’s Leather-Stocking Tales is sluggishly plotted
and a-brim with a confusing collection of stock characters. The story has some of the basic elements of a good historical novel: Elizabeth Bonner, a strong-willed, daring heroine, and a man to match her, her husband Nathaniel, son of "Hawkeye," a rough-hewn but sensitive woodsman. As the tale opens, Elizabeth has borne twins. A nursing mother, she nevertheless leaves Lake-In-the-Clouds, her home near Paradise, New York, in the dead of winter to follow Nathaniel to Montreal, where he’s gone to get his father out of jail. It’s unclear why he’s been detained; the charge is espionage, yet there’s also rumor he’s secreted a cache of Tory gold. Father and son and a few of their buddies soon find themselves slated to be hanged. The narrative becomes especially difficult to follow as Donati adds a little more intrigue with the Earl of Carryck’s claim that Hawkeye is his heir. The Bonners, married into the Mohawk family of Chingachgook, may also be pawns in a scheme to bring the sachem, Stone-Splitter, around for a little real-estate negotiation. Throw in some spice from Nathaniel’s—and everyone else’s—former lover, Giselle Somerville, daughter of the lieutenant governor, plus a few interchangeable Scotsmen, and you have a plot so congested as to defy the most attentive reader. Donati (real name: Rosina Lippi-Green, Homestead, 1999) allows her characters to talk, talk, talk their way through the action en route to Canada and the denouement in Scotland. The dialogue is often stilted, artificial ("This is most irregular. You cannot be in earnest"), and the prose unintentionally funny when Donati most wants to be dramatic: "She swept into the sitting room on a breeze of her own making."
Lacks the dash, verve, and clarity of quality historical romance. Rafael Sabatini, where are you when we really need you?Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-553-10748-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2000
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Roberts does it again with this fast-paced romantic mystery that's both steamy and thrilling, despite its somewhat obvious...
Beautiful Italian babe with a passion for fire and doomed hunks joins the arson squad and discovers that someone has held a torch for her since she was a child.
When Reena Hale is 11 years old, she watches her family's Baltimore pizzeria go up in flames. Thanks to a local arson detective, John Minger, and the girl's keen memory, police determine that a neighborhood crook whose young son had recently attacked Reena was out for revenge, and soon cops publicly haul the dirt bag off to jail. The large and loving Hale family bands together and rebuilds; Reena grows up curious about the origins of fire. She attends college and, after her boyfriend dies in an accident, joins the police force and learns the inner workings of the fire department. Eventually, she teams with Minger to solve the city's suspicious fires. Meanwhile, over the years, a shady character has been hiding in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to violently sabotage Reena's relationships (usually with the help of explosives). Somehow Reena doesn't put together that all of her boyfriends have been in the path of catastrophic (occasionally deadly) events, so her stalker hits the phone lines to clue her in with dirty messages that become more and more intimate. When Reena launches a torrid love affair with her new neighbor, whose truck soon explodes, she begins to get it. Fearing for her family's safety, Reena reopens past cases and learns that her troubles started when she was a child. The tale builds to a breathless climax as she (literally) races to beat out the flames of one fire before determining where the next one will be set.
Roberts does it again with this fast-paced romantic mystery that's both steamy and thrilling, despite its somewhat obvious nature.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2005
ISBN: 0-399-15306-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2005
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