With an ending that is never in question, this tale offers the pleasant experience of simply enjoying a lighthearted frolic...
An angel and a playboy find love in Matthews’ (The Lost Letter, 2017, etc.) latest Victorian romance.
Valentine March is all alone in the world after the death of her father, a small-town English vicar. With few options, Valentine takes a position as a companion to the abominable Lady Brightwell. Despite some unattractive clothing and a lower social status, Valentine’s beauty and innocence attract the attention of Tristan Sinclair, the infamous Viscount St. Ashton. When the love-struck couple are caught in a passionate kiss, the playboy swears off his life of gambling, brawling, and women and promises to make an honest woman of Valentine. But his father, the Earl of Lynden, has other ideas about his heir’s future. He sends Tristan to his remote estate in Northumberland and, in a Cinderella moment, ascertains that Valentine is a woman of high breeding and connects her with her long-lost and wealthy family. Happily, the two lovers are determined to uphold their promises, though they both battle uncertainty regarding the other’s true feelings. Despite a formulaic plot and predictable outcome, Matthews’ tale hits all the high notes of a great romance novel. Valentine, the heroine, is a spunky underdog completely unaware of her own beauty and uninterested in material wealth. Tristan is a smoldering hunk of love, a bad boy with a soft heart who just wants someone to believe in him. Their mutual attraction is a joy to behold. But this romance is not a bodice-ripper. Except for a few steamy kisses, this is a rather chaste love story that focuses on emotions rather than sex scenes. Matthews is a polished writer who knows her genre and audience. Several scenes, as when Tristan swoops in to boot out Valentine’s sleazy former suitor, are particularly entertaining and allow the Viscount to play the hero. “No one has ever stood up for me before,” Valentine gasps. “You were magnificent.” Cue the satisfied sighs of romance readers everywhere.
With an ending that is never in question, this tale offers the pleasant experience of simply enjoying a lighthearted frolic in the past.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9990364-3-3
Page Count: 245
Publisher: Perfectly Proper Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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