The Sparkling One
Grade : B-

I did not like this book at first. It features the kind of family situation that only occurs in romance novels - four beautiful adult sisters who spend a lot of time drinking wine and eating pasta in the bosom of their boisterous Italian family at the scenic ancestral vineyard. It also has the kind of hero guaranteed to push my buttons, not in a good way. So I was pleasantly surprised when The Sparkling One rose above its unpromising beginnings with a realistic love story and characters who stubbornly refuse to be stereotypes.

Katie Marcelli is a successful events planner. She’s delighted when she is hired by lawyer Zach Stryker to plan a fundraiser for his law firm. It’s a bigger and more high-profile job than she’s ever had before, and she’s also secretly thrilled to be working in close proximity to the gorgeous Zach. He’s not her type, unfortunately - he’s into temporary flings and she wants wedding bells. However, it turns out that Zach hired Katie, not for her organizational talent, but because her youngest sister Mia is engaged to marry Zach’s son David.

David and Mia are eighteen and in love. Mia and Katie come from a traditional Catholic family which pressures its children to marry and have children young, so there’s no problem there. David’s father Zach, however, doesn’t believe in happily-ever-afters, and he knows all too well the perils of marrying young. He is determined to stop the wedding and he doesn’t care who gets hurt. "The trick," Zach thinks, "would be getting David to think [the breakup] was his own idea." He hires Kate so that he can pressure her to help stop to the wedding.

Now, one of my biggest pet peeves in romance novels is the meddlesome relative who lies, steals, and manipulates in order to either make a match or to break up the main couple. (This only really bothers me in contemporaries - it seems to fit better in historicals.) It’s not that I deny parents the right to nag their adult children for their own good, but I draw the line at deceit, blackmail, and behind-the-scenes string-pulling. Imagine my dismay when I realized that this book features just such an interfering father - and he’s the hero.

The low point of the book is when Zach tells Katie that if she doesn’t help him try to break up David and Mia, he’ll fire her, which will publicly damage her career. At this point I hated Zach and, while I respected Katie for refusing to bow to pressure, I was annoyed with her for continuing to lust after him. (Fortunately for my drywall, he was bluffing.)

Amazingly, things actually get good after that. This is mostly thanks to the ensemble of secondary characters, who really come to life. One of Katie’s sisters, Brenna, is getting a divorce and hires Zach to represent her. Her emotions are very realistically drawn, and I sympathized with her. Another sister, Francesca, is so funny and strange that I’m going to have to read her book just to figure out what’s going on with her. Mia and David start having relationship troubles; will they bow to Zach's schemes or deal with their troubles themselves?

Meanwhile, Katie and Zach have some big issues to work through. Even after they become intimate (and their love scenes are quite hot), their problems remain serious. Zach’s tendency is to walk away from a relationship when the going gets rough; Katie longs for permanence, but she just doesn't trust Zach. The conflict is internal and character-driven, and the resolution satisfies. And remember the fundraiser that Zach hired Katie to plan? I thought it was just a plot device to get the characters together, but that party takes on a life of its own and leads to some of the most effective and suspenseful writing I’ve read in a while. The author skillfully brings all the numerous plot strands together in one climactic scene, leaving just enough threads untied to make me long to read the sequel.

No one was more surprised than me when I started really enjoying this book and rooting for its characters to find a happy ending. The latter half of this book is near perfection, but if I hadn't been reading this book for review, I might never have gotten past the first, annoying quarter. After much thought, I settled upon a grade of B-: a qualified recommendation.

If don’t share my intense dislike of meddlesome relative characters, I recommend you pick up The Sparkling One right away. If you’re like me and this is a plot contrivance that makes you furious - well, you might want to give it a try anyway.

Reviewed by Jennifer Keirans
Grade : B-

Sensuality: Hot

Review Date : September 17, 2003

Publication Date: 2003

Review Tags: 

Recent Comments …

Jennifer Keirans

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
0
What's your opinion?x
()
x