Happy Endings

November 4, 1991
Quinn's insightful and dramatic follow-up to Regrets Only is an addictive Washington, D.C.-based soap opera with bestseller potential. Sadie Grey, the vulnerable and manipulative widow of U.S. President Rosey Grey, tells handsome journalist Desmond Shaw--with whom she spent many a stolen White House moment--that he, not Rosey, fathered her young son. Des, however, plans to marry old love Allison Sterling, a competitive newswoman just appointed to a prominent post at a heretofore male-dominated daily paper. While the sticky paternity matter remains unresolved, Allison masterfully quashes chauvinism in the workplace and learns she is pregnant; Sadie teaches lovable-but-tacky new First Lady Blanche Osgood the dos and don'ts of politicking and falls for an AIDS researcher/physician whose Jewish faith and wife prove to be stumbling blocks. Quinn dexterously pens passionate interludes, verbal sparring matches and behind-the-scenes glimpses of the White House and the newsroom, although the abundant crises and lovelorn soliloquies here may prove too maudlin for more discriminating tastes. Literary Guild main selection.

December 1, 1991
This novel about the foibles of the rich and famous is set in Washington, D.C., and takes on the White House, a powerful national newspaper, the subject of AIDS, and Judaism, to name but a few of its elaborate backdrops. Sadie Gray is the beautiful widow of the recently assassinated U.S. president; Allison Sterling, a formidable news reporter, is the new national affairs editor for the Washington Daily . These women are adversarially linked through their love of the same man, Desmond Shaw, another powerful media type. The story wends its way through Washington and beyond, finding another love interest in the form of the handsome but inaccessible Dr. Michael Lanzer, head of the National Cancer Institute, who has discovered a new AIDS treatment drug. The novel is rife with intrigue and romance; what the characters lack in dimension, they more than make up for in angst. The tortuous plot sags occasionally in this long-winded tale but still supplies plenty of superficial entertainment for the persevering reader. Recommended for public libraries. Literary Guild main selection; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/91.-- Margaret Jourdain, Sonoma State Univ., Rohnert Park, Cal.

Copyright 1991 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.