A readable, highly charged amalgam of erotic action and suspense headlined by a likable, compassionate exotic performer with...
Dual-authored debut fiction about a young but seasoned stripper navigating the Las Vegas strip club circuit.
Strong, sexy African-American stripper Melissa Masters, 23, works the Stilettos strip club patrons like a pro, but the dancing lifestyle is anything but glitzy. Now in her fourth year at the club, Masters (her stage name is “Sapphire”) recalls the day, having just turned 21, she left Buffalo, N.Y., for the “fantasy and lights of Las Vegas.” Those days of innocence long gone, she now must contend with exhaustive hours spent lap-dancing rich, pushy, strange men while fending off the sexual advances of Stilettos’ sleazy, arrogant general manager, Scott. Her personal life is also messy thanks to Spider, a smooth operator on the Vegas scene; she falls for Spider, and he fathers their daughter, Christina. The authors amp up the melodrama after Christina is removed from Sapphire’s care, Sapphire doesn’t excommunicate Spider altogether, until she discovers that he’s already married with two teenage children. A hasty marriage to a wealthy, aging retiree named Tony temporarily satiates Sapphire, but soon, she longs for Spider’s bad-boy tough love and a chance to rat out Stilettos’ shady management to the FBI. Complementing the fast-moving storyline are pages of fascinating insider industry secrets, such as a dancer’s sartorial requirements, the prevalence of police trouble and dirty details of the strip club circuit, all culled from co-author Diamond’s seven years as a Vegas stripper. Toward the book’s conclusion, Diamond’s intentions to educate, not patronize, the women working within the lucrative strip club world and challenge the preconceived notions associated with it are discreetly communicated through Sapphire. Diamond and McGann compile a rousing, spicy brew of sex, love and intrigue with a cliffhanger ending foretelling more Sapphire adventures to come.
A readable, highly charged amalgam of erotic action and suspense headlined by a likable, compassionate exotic performer with a heart of gold.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-1493105472
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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