There’s also plenty of narrative room for the promised sequel for those who can’t wait to find out what happens to Mary...
Slow-paced, emotionally charged romance; the first in a planned series by best-selling genre novelist Macomber (1225 Christmas Tree Lane, 2011, etc.).
Rose Harbor is sort of like Cabot Cove: beautiful, a touch staid, full of folk who look and act the part of locals. The difference is, there’s no mayhem of the sort that would give Angela Lansbury reason to get up in the morning in Rose Harbor, which lies about due west from Cabot Cove and on the opposite coast. There, Jo Marie Rose has just moved to open a B&B. She had found romance late in life (well, in her late 30s, anyway) only to suffer the death of her husband in far-off Afghanistan, the victim of a chopper crash high in the mountains. That’s a nice modern touch in a story that could essentially fit into the Nancy Drew line—if, that is, anything happened in Rose Harbor that involved action and not talk. The storyline about Jo Marie and the late Paul seems rushed and almost perfunctory, as if the author doesn’t quite trust it as a dramatic element, but she gets on surer ground when she introduces another character whose life has been made unhappy thanks to a machinery mishap. Macomber’s players are grief-ridden in different degrees and ways, and the saving grace of this book, full of explication and asides (“Josh had his own issues, his own scars. Richard seemed determined to leave matters as they were between them and to die alone”), is that the author recognizes that life is tough and that people need room to deal with that fact, dancing elaborately around one another and the issues until they get things figured out. And so it is in Rose Harbor, and if some of the narrative dashes the reader on mawkish shoals, at least there’s some nice smooching in the end (“[Y]ou’re an idiot, a very lovable idiot, but still an idiot”).
There’s also plenty of narrative room for the promised sequel for those who can’t wait to find out what happens to Mary Smith, Kent Shivers and the rest.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-345-52892-6
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2012
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal...
A gumbo seasoned with ghosts, love, and murder on the bayou.
When 30-something Declan Fitzgerald of Boston, a successful lawyer and a member of a large and loving family, breaks off his engagement to very suitable Jessica, he knows he needs to change his life. Lawyering is not fun anymore, so, recalling Manet Hall, an old deserted plantation house he once visited with law school classmate and New Orleans native Remy, he buys the property and moves down south. Declan is also a gifted craftsman, a born decorator, and very, very rich. Soon, he meets beautiful Lena, who’s visiting her grandmother Odette, Declan’s friendly Cajun neighbor. Declan is as certain that Lena is destined to be his wife as he was that Manet Hall would become his home. But, surprise, Lena has a troubled past (like the house) and is determined to resist Declan’s courtship. While he suits Lena and works on the place, Declan experiences troubling dreams. It seems he’s actually reliving the novel’s parallel story, which took place in 1899. In that year, the maid, Abbey Manet (from whom Lena, coincidentally, is descended, and who married wealthy Lucian Manet), was raped and murdered by her brother-in-law Julian as she nursed her baby daughter. Her body was dumped into the bayou by her mother-in-law, who despised her. And grief-stricken husband Lucian, away at the time, being told that Abbey had run off, committed suicide. Now, in an unconvincing twist of gender and reincarnation, it’s Declan who hears a baby crying , experiences childbirth and rape as the reincarnation of Abbey, while Lena is Lucian. The two accept all this with equanimity, and, Manet Hall’s secrets revealed, it becomes the setting for predictable and much foreshadowed resolutions.
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal fans will enjoy.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14824-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
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