Light and frothy but undeniably sweet: a pleasant excursion to nowhere, done up in high style at a brisk pace.
Thelma and Louise do Europe in Hayter’s (the Robin Hudson female detective series) witty account of two American girls who go wild on vacation and end up in big trouble.
Chloe Bowen and Blackie Maher just want to have some fun. Still smarting several weeks after being unceremoniously dumped by her boyfriend, college senior Chloe decides to snap herself out of the doldrums by going ahead with a long-planned summer vacation in Europe, taking her best friend Blackie with her instead of Mr. Ex. It turns out to be an inspired move: Chloe and Blackie have similar tastes in just about everything except men, so they manage to get along fine and never end up stealing each other’s heartthrobs. In fact, they soon discover that they’re natural-born con-girls, adept at spotting married philanderers in hotel bars, slipping them mickeys in their rooms, and robbing them blind once they’ve passed out. Like many careers, Chloe and Blackie’s excursion into crime begins by mistake, goes on as a curiosity, and soon develops into a smooth and lucrative routine. But you have to be careful when you pick your marks, and the girls make their first misstep when they roll an Australian gangster and end up in possession of a gold-plated statuette that’s been stolen from a Bombay mafioso. What’s inside it? We don’t know for sure, but soon the Aussie has been murdered by mob goons who then set off in pursuit of Chloe and Blackie. On top of that, it turns out that Chloe is the look-alike of an English aristocrat who has lately broken out of a Swiss rehab center and gone into hiding. They say travel is broadening, but Chloe and Blackie, if they can’t find their way home, may soon be flattened out by the experience.
Light and frothy but undeniably sweet: a pleasant excursion to nowhere, done up in high style at a brisk pace.Pub Date: July 27, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-4744-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Three Rivers/Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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