Return To Sender

March 22, 2010
Even if the plot of Michaels's latest (after The Scoop
) was meant to be a farce, it remains unbelievably ludicrous. Lin Townsend, raised by a religious zealot, had a rough childhood and got pregnant when she was 17. Thrown out of her home, she raises her son, Will, poor and alone, and the letters she sends over the years to Nick Pemberton, Will's father, are returned to sender. Lin eventually saves enough to send Will to NYU, but just before his freshman year, Lin runs into Nick, who is now married, wealthy, and has no clue who Lin is. And so Lin vows revenge: her plot is to “tie up” Nick's money and to make him suffer like she did for all those years. Meanwhile, Nick discovers he has leukemia and decides to cut off his bitch of a wife, who has her own dastardly plans. None of it is especially believable, and the characters are either underdeveloped or maddeningly inconsistent. Additionally, Michaels's prose is frequently slapdash (“It wasn't possible, yet her common sense told her it was highly probable!”), but that's unlikely to diminish the book's commercial prospects.

April 15, 2010
Lin Townsend is the owner of a successful diner in Georgia. Her son Will is kind, courteous, intelligent, and about to embark on his freshman year at NYU. Little would anyone know that almost 20 years earlier Lin had been pregnant and alone, kicked out by her religious father and rejected by the babys father. But with that life behind her, Lin is excited about bringing her son to New York where he can start the life she worked so hard to give him. But all is turned upside down when she runs into Nick PembertonWills father, the man who abandoned her all those years ago. Michaels tells a story that is simultaneously heartbreaking, suspenseful, and tender. Filled with anger and resolved to punish Nick for his past actions, Lin, with the help of a hired detective, begins to unravel the truth of her past and make important decisions about her future.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)