When someone wants to be lost, a home tucked among the Ten Thousand Islands off the Florida coast is a good place to live. Take a couple decent boats and a deep knowledge of fishing, and Sunday can get by without ever having to talk to another soul. It's a nice enough existence, until the one person who ties Sunday to the world of the living asks him for help.
Father Steady Capri knows quite a bit about helping others. But he is afraid Katie Quinn's problems may be beyond his abilities. Katie is a world-famous actress with an all too familiar story. Fame seems to have driven her to self-destruct. Steady knows the true cause of her desire to end her life is buried too deeply for him to reach. But there is one person who still may be able to save her from herself: Sunday.
He will show her an alternate escape, a way to write a new life, but Katie still must confront her past before she can find peace. Ultimately, Sunday will need to leave his secluded home and sacrifice the serenity he's found to help her.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
May 7, 2013 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
- ISBN: 9781455578900
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781455503940
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781455503940
- File size: 1719 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Publisher's Weekly
May 6, 2013
A kind-hearted priest brings together two celebrities who have faked their own deaths in Martin's ninth novel (after Thunder and Rain). Katie, a renowned actress, and Peter, a notable children's author, use failed suicide attempts to confront past demons. The novel reads as much like a mystery as a romance since neither main character reveals their past until the final third of the book. Unfortunately, this lack of back story, as well as the fact that they both have achieved a degree of wealth and fame that trumps any Trump, can leave the reader feeling like they've stumbled upon a modern day romantic allegory instead of a character-driven work of fiction. Martin is at his best when describing the invisibility Peter feels leading his life outside of the limelight. The book also takes on the power of reading and writing which also plays an important part in the climax. Throughout, the trappings expensive cars, private planes and French chateaus keep the reader's sympathies removed from whatever past tragedies haunt these two, but for those who like their romances on the fantastical side there's more than enough of the lives of the rich and famous to keep one engaged. -
Kirkus
Starred review from June 15, 2013
Katie Quinn learns "[l]ife in the spotlight, on the pedestal, at the top of the world was a lonely, singular, desolate, soul-killing place" in Martin's (Thunder and Rain, 2012, etc.) latest. Katie's an actress. Think Streep's talent and Jolie's beauty. Katie's also burdened with near-unbearable pain. A performer able to subsume herself into character, Katie's being destroyed--too much work, too many demands, too many prescription drugs, too many men too ready to use her. That means three ex-husbands and a biographer, a writer who deceives her and then publishes a lie-filled tabloid-headlining book. Katie has one true friend, Steady, an elderly Catholic priest. After suicide attempts and failed rehab, Katie has offered a troubling confession. Father Steady is apprehensive. He turns to another lost soul for help, a friend he calls Sunday, a man with his own dark secret. Setting his novel in Miami and Florida's Ten Thousand Islands, Martin sends Sunday and Steady to rescue Katie as she attempts to hang herself. They spirit her away to Sunday's home, a refurbished fishing trawler anchored at the Everglades' edge. Pampered and spoiled, angry and depressed, Katie's resentful at first and then intrigued when Sunday offers an escape through the "third door"--a faked death, a path with which he's familiar. Martin then private-jets the story to France and Chateau de Langeais, where chameleon Katie is living another life under another identity. There, as Katie grows slowly to trust Sunday, she opens herself emotionally but then collapses and rejects him after revealing her bleakest secret. Her repudiation is the catalyst inspiring Sunday to reveal his own troubled history with success and fame, allowing Katie and Sunday to discover "[a]ll hearts have but one request. To be known." The novel stumbles over a minor plot hole or two, but there are orphans, pilgrimages to a children's hospital and other calamities as Martin's story charges headlong into the sentimental territory--and best-seller terrain--of The Notebook, which doubtless will mean major studio screen treatment. Buy tissues. Tears will flow.COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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