Lessons in Heartbreak

December 1, 2008
Kelly (Past Secrets
) brings a strong voice and deft hand with character to this engaging story about repairing three generations of broken hearts. Izzie Silver is a smalltown Irish girl turned successful booker at a top modeling firm in New York City, where she dreams of someday setting up her own agency for plus-sized models. She's fallen in love with Joe Hansen, a financier who is handsome, generous, charming—and married. Unfortunately, Izzie doesn't think she can go to her normal advice source on this one—her grandmother Lily just wouldn't understand. Meanwhile, Izzie's aunt, Anneliese, learns her husband of 37 years has been having an affair with her best friend. Things get worse for Izzie and Anneliese when Lily suffers a stroke, but through Lily's old journals dating back to WWII, the women discover Lily had some romantic secrets and massive heartbreak of her own. Kelly cleverly subverts women's fiction clichés and delivers some excellent and unconventional plot twists. The conclusion won't leave a dry eye in the house.

January 1, 2009
Izzie Silver, a New York model booker, longs to change the fashion worlds fixation on sickly thin beauties with an agency representing plus-sized models. She also longs to be withthe love of her life, but he is married and unwilling to upset the world he has created for his sons. When her grandmother falls ill, Izzie returns to her hometown of Tamarin, Ireland, to weigh her choices. Kelly intertwines Izzies struggles with flashbacks of her grandmothers life as a nurse during the London Blitz and her forbidden love for a young officer, and with scenes from the life of Izzies aunt, Anneliese, who is devastated by an affair between her husband and best friend. Kelly, author of Past Secrets (2006), crosses generations and continents to tell a sweeping, if uneven, story of love and betrayal. Readers will enjoy delving into the connections between the characters corresponding experiences.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)