Fresh, funny, clever, and deeply satisfying.
A quirky romance between a New York City woman famous for her lovely hand-lettering and the Wall Street mathematician who discovers the secret messages she embeds in her work.
Meg, an Instagram-famous hand-letterer and calligrapher, couldn’t resist embedding a hidden code in the wedding program of society bride Avery and her handsome but taciturn groom, Reid. When the wedding is cancelled, Reid, a quantitative analyst who discovered Meg’s message (“M-I-S-T-A-K-E”), seeks her out. Reid knows the breakup was for the best, but it brings home how lost and out of place he feels in New York. For her part, Meg has been experiencing artist’s block as she prepares to compete for a contract with a major retail chain to feature her work in their stationery line. She invites Reid to walk the streets of the city with her, looking for meaning in the words and letters around them. As their romance heats up, Reid has to contend with some major conflict at work, and Meg is coping with the demands of a new celebrity client and the increasing distance of her best friend and roommate, Sibby. Clayborn’s (Best of Luck, 2018, etc.) depiction of the artistry of hand-lettering and the worlds that letters open up for Meg is fascinating. Letters and signs organize Meg’s experience: “L-I-K-E, after all, is a word I’ve been turning over and over a lot in my head over these last two weeks, trying to absorb it into my being, trying to keep it from becoming something else.” Meg’s dry observations are hilarious (her drink is a “defibrillator in a cup”), and even readers familiar with New York will see the city in a new light, through its signs and symbols. Reid and Meg are wonderfully unique, and their romance carves a sweet, winding, and sexy path to self-acceptance and mutual affirmation.
Fresh, funny, clever, and deeply satisfying.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2517-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
As the plot grows more complicated, it also sheds believability, leaving sex and witty banter to carry the day.
Brown (Mean Streak, 2014, etc.) ticks off the boxes that elevate her books to the bestseller lists in this sexy romantic thriller set in Texas.
Rock-jawed hero with a dark past: check. Strong-willed, beautiful woman who resists his charms: check. A Whitman’s Sampler of bad guys: check. And finally, a convoluted and not always plausible plot: check. In this latest outing, readers meet TV journalist Kerra Bailey, whose family was torn apart years ago by a hotel bombing that killed 197 people in Dallas. Just in time for the 25th anniversary, Kerra scores an interview with the notoriously private Maj. Trapper, who saved her life, among others, when he emerged from the blast to lead the survivors out of danger. There's an iconic, prizewinning photo of the major carrying a little girl from the wreckage, but the child has never been identified—until now, when Kerra goes public with the information that it was her. Just after they finish filming the interview in his home, the major is shot, and an injured Kerra escapes in the confusion. The major’s son, disgraced Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent John Trapper—a name M*A*S*H fans will appreciate—steps in, igniting a chain of events that leads to murder, intrigue, betrayal, and a series of dark revelations. As with most of Brown’s heroes and heroines, there’s palpable sexual tension between Trapper, whose taut rear occupies ample literary real estate, and Kerra, who when dealing with Trapper feels “like he’d lightly scratched her just below her bellybutton” when he’s not making her “pleasure points throb.” The complex plot plays out in a round of reveals that don’t always make a lot of sense, but that’s not why Brown’s fans read her books. They check in for the witty, pitch-perfect dialogue and fluid writing. A master of her genre, Brown knows how to please her most ardent readers but relies too often on the same basic formula from novel to novel.
As the plot grows more complicated, it also sheds believability, leaving sex and witty banter to carry the day.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4555-7210-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Hannah, after eight paperbacks, abandons her successful time-travelers for a hardcover life of kitchen-sink romance. Everyone must have got the Olympic Peninsula memo for this spring because, as of this reading, authors Hannah, Nora Roberts, and JoAnn Ross have all placed their newest romances in or near the Quinault rain forest. Here, 40ish Annie Colwater, returns to Washington State after her husband, high-powered Los Angeles lawyer Blake, tells her he’s found another (younger) woman and wants a divorce. Although a Stanford graduate, Annie has known only a life of perfect wifedom: matching Blake’s ties to his suits and cooking meals from Gourmet magazine. What is she to do with her shattered life? Well, she returns to dad’s house in the small town of Mystic, cuts off all her hair (for a different look), and goes to work as a nanny for lawman Nick Delacroix, whose wife has committed suicide, whose young daughter Izzy refuses to speak, and who himself has descended into despair and alcoholism. Annie spruces up Nick’s home on Mystic Lake and sends “Izzy-bear” back into speech mode. And, after Nick begins attending AA meetings, she and he become lovers. Still, when Annie learns that she’s pregnant not with Nick’s but with Blake’s child, she heads back to her empty life in the Malibu Colony. The baby arrives prematurely, and mean-spirited Blake doesn’t even stick around to support his wife. At this point, it’s perfectly clear to Annie—and the reader—that she’s justified in taking her newborn daughter and driving back north. Hannah’s characters indulge in so many stages of the weeps, from glassy eyes to flat-out sobs, that tear ducts are almost bound to stay dry. (First printing of 100,000; first serial to Good Housekeeping; Literary Guild/Doubleday book club selections)
Pub Date: March 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-609-60249-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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