Choosing Sophie

December 24, 2007
Adoption insights get benched in favor of sports slapstick in Carroll’s mother-daughter farce. Forty-year-old former burlesque queen Olivia deMarley is engaged to a Colorado sports equipment magnate, but she’s never shaken her disappointment over her estrangement from her wealthy disapproving father, Augie. When Livy returns to Manhattan for Augie’s funeral, she receives two surprises: first is the reappearance of Sophie, the daughter Livy gave up for adoption 20 years ago. Secondly, Augie’s will leaves Livy the controlling interest in the Bronx Cheers, a cellar-dwelling minor league baseball team, provided she can “close the circle.” Left to ponder her father’s cryptic words, Livy is given a chance to develop a relationship with tough-minded softball star Sophie, even if it means distancing herself from the man she loves. Although Carroll includes plenty of birth mother–daughter–adoptive parent tension, most of the revelations feel superficial, as the plots hinges primarily on light comedy, whether it be in the courtroom, in ridiculous family shenanigans or on the baseball diamond. Readers who like their humor broad and their sports fiction tinted pink will revel in Carroll’s mother-daughter dynamos.

February 1, 2008
The opening pages of actress Carrolls frothy offering find flame-haired former burlesque dancer Olivia Venus DeMarley reveling in her dreamy relationship with dashing fianc' Tom. Alas, their bliss is interrupted by news that Augie, Olivias cantankerous billionaire father, has died. Though the two have been estranged for decades (since Olivia became pregnant out of wedlock), she feels obliged to attend his memorial service. It is there, for the first time, that she meets Sophie, the now college-age daughter she put up for adoption. Its one in a series of surprises for Olivia, who soon learns she has been handed the reins to Augies lackluster minor-league baseball teamon one condition: she forge the kind of close relationship with her daughter that eluded her and her father. Olivia knows zilch about running a sports franchise and turns to Sophie, a crackerjack softball player, for advice. There is lots of mother-daughter bonding in Carrolls lighthearted farce, though some readers may wish she had written with a bit less frivolity about the emotionally charged topic of adoption.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)