A Star Is Born meets All About Eve, Evans’ (Happily Ever After, 2012, etc.) latest deftly weaves together tales of old and...
A-list movie star Sophie Leigh has had enough of cheesy chick flicks, but her agent won’t hear of her turning down The Bachelorette Party, not with gorgeous Patrick Drew already signed on to co-star.
Like her idol, Eve Noel, a 1950s starlet, Sophie has little control over her career—not if she wants to make money for the box office, that is. Hollywood producers changed Eve’s name, her wardrobe and even her hairline to generate cinematic hits. Eventually, she’s even told to marry the much older, more powerful, but very dangerous actor Gilbert Travers. Yet, the industry can’t erase her memories of her sister Rose’s drowning or her own inconvenient love for Don Matthews, a powerless, alcoholic, yet loving screenwriter. After discovering their tryst, Gilbert arranges to have Don eliminated from her life. And one day, Eve disappears. Sixty years later, Sophie still has to change her name and endure not only arranged dating, but also a paparazzi-fueled public that turns a little sweat into Armpitgate. Inspired by Eve’s film A Girl Named Rose, Sophie’s determined to shepherd through the system her own independent film. Although it needs some work, My Second-Best Bed has the potential to be a real film. Troubles escalate when someone begins sending threatening notes and sneaking into Sophie’s home to leave white roses on her bed. Can she trust her co-star? Her director? Her new assistant? As Sophie tries to advance her project and solve the mystery of Eve’s disappearance while avoiding her stalker, her life becomes more and more entwined with Eve’s. Soon, it’s Eve who holds the keys to Sophie’s survival.
A Star Is Born meets All About Eve, Evans’ (Happily Ever After, 2012, etc.) latest deftly weaves together tales of old and new Hollywood, allowing star-crossed romance, mystery and danger to collide in surprising and often devastating ways.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4603-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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