A stunning and powerful contemporary love story from one of the best storytellers this century. Lily's life is turned upside down with the disappearance of her flat mate, incredible revelations about her family and a personal discovery, all of which will affect her forever!What if everything you believed about your life was a lie? Meet Lily Quinn. She is broke, struggling to finish college, pay her rent, find love. Adrift in bustling New York City, the most interesting things in Lily's life happen to the people around her. But Lily loves her aimless life ! until her best friend and roommate Amy disappears. That's when Spencer Patrick O'Malley, a cynical, past his prime NYPD detective with demons of his own, enters Lily's world. And a sudden financial windfall which should bring Lily joy instead becomes an ominous portent of the dark forces gathering around her. But fate isn't finished with Lily. She finds herself fighting for her life as Spencer's search for the missing Amy intensifies, leading Lily to question everything she knew about her friend and family. Startling revelations about the people she loves force her to confront truths that will leave her changed forever. From a master storyteller comes a new heart-wrenching, magnificent and unputdownable novel. This is the odyssey of two young women, Lily and Amy, roommates and friends on the verge of the rest of their lives.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for Tully 'Pick up this book and prepare to have your emotions wrung so completely you'll be sobbing your heart out one minute and laughing through your tears the next! Read it and weep -- literally' Praise for Tatiana and Alexander 'This has everything a romance glutton could wish for: a bold, talented and dashing hero, a heart-stopping love affair that nourishes its two protagonists even when they are separated and lost, a long and bitter military campaign, plus personal excavations into the past. It also has -- thank goodness -- a welcome sense of humour and discernable characters rather than ciphers.' Victoria Moore, Daily Mail Praise for The Bronze Horseman 'Pulling off the passionate love story embedded in a truly epic narrative is a difficult thing to do. Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind remains the blueprint for the genre! it's quickly apparent that the Russian-born author Paullina Simons has the measure of this kind of epic romantic saga. The power of her descriptive writing, the vividness of the historical detail and, most of all, the strength of her central characters mark out her novel as a considerable achievement.' Barry Foreshaw, amazon.co.uk 'Pulling off the passionate love story embedded in a truly epic narrative is a difficult thing to do. Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind remains the blueprint for the genre! it's quickly apparent that the Russian-born author Paullina Simons has the measure of this kind of epic romantic saga. The power of her descriptive writing, the vividness of the historical detail and, most of all, the strength of her central characters mark out her novel as a considerable achievement.' Praise for The Bronze Horseman Barry Foreshaw, amazon.co.uk
About the Author
Paullina Simons was born in Leningrad in 1963. As a child she emigrated to Queens, New York, and attended colleges in Long Island. Then she moved to England and attended Essex University, before returning to America. She lives in New York with her husband and children.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stunning !!!!,
By Erin Brooks "Erin Brooks" (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Girl in Times Square (Paperback)
This book took me totally by surprise - this is the story of Lily, a 25 year old girl living in New York, whose flatmate and bestfriend Amy suddenly goes missing. In comes Detective Spencer O'Malley, who by searching for Amy unravels more than Lily and himself could ever have imagined. This is an amazing story of a girl struck by luck, both good and bad, who tries to make her way through life when revelations on herself, her family and her loved ones come crashing down on her. Paullina Simmons has done an amazing job with this difficult story. I read the book in less than a week and couldn't wait to find out about Lily, Spencer, and those around them. Truly truly wonderful book, I cannot recommend it enough.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Once Again Paullina Simons Delivers,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Girl in Times Square (Paperback)
I've been a fan of Paullina Simons ever since I once stumbled across The Broze Horseman. Since then I've read every other Paullina Simons book I can get my hands on. If I absolutely had to compare it to another Simons novel I'd compare it to Tully in that it's very much a character study, but really it's not all that similar. It's new literary ground for Simons.
Basically the plot deals with a 24 year old New Yorker named Lily, who sort of floats through life. She's broke and afraid to commit to anything. Suddenly several unexpected events occur at once and the ever superstitous Lily is shaken to the core: Her best friend and roommate, Amy, goes missing suddenly, and Lily wins $18 million in the lottery. Lily is terrified to cash in her ticket because she's waiting for her luck to run out (which she thinks will happen by something bad happening to Amy). But Lily can't escape her fate even by not cashing in her ticket. She's diagnosed with an extrememly rare form of leukemia. On the verge of death Lily suddenly realises that she can't bear to leave the life that she's been afraid to commit to. She's fallen in love with Spencer, the detective in charge of looking for Amy. Meanwhile Spencer has uncovered disturbing evidence linking Amy's disappearance to Lily's brother Andrew, and the consequences of a case from his past have come back to haunt him (Simons fans might remember Spencer from the book "Red Leaves"). The plot sounds confusing but that's because the book seems to defy genre- it's a love story (Lily and Spencer), a mystery (what happened to Amy? How was Andrew involved?) a family drama (wait to you read about Lily's family!) and the story of Lily coming to find herself as she fights for her life, and tries to fight Spencer's demons so that he can share that life with her. Anyway, I recommend it to all of Simon's fans, and I can't wait to read her next book.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Way way over the top,
By Angela Linton "Angie" (Manchester) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Girl in Times Square (Paperback)
No-one can deny Simmons ability to write and this book was at times too compelling to put down. However by the end I felt a little battered by the whole thing - there is far too much going on - a girl disappearing, alcoholism, cancer, a lottery win, tales of the holocaust, family betrayal a passionate affair between a police officer and the sister of his chief suspect - she might carry off maybe three of those themes but taken together I was suffering from emotional overload - by the end - to the extent that when the mystery of missing Amy is finally solved I found I'd lost interest. I think Simmons is at her best when dealing with family and romantic relationships - her ideas of how cops/doctors might carry out their professional duties is sometimes a little off - for example doctors blurting out confidential information about a patient to the first person who asks them - and the whole police enquiry about Spencer strikes a false note to me. It could have done with some serious editing - the first section drags and the ridiculous business with the uncashed lottery ticket irritated me to the point I almost threw the book down. And the whole cancer/alcoholism story often threatened to veer into wild family melodrama though much of it was very compelling. The end greatly disappointed - the Milo storyline was unbelievable and some of the parts where he is spouting Marxist/anarchist doctrine to Lily are laughably bad.
I think she could either have written a book about a girl whose flatmate disappears and whose brother is a suspect or a book about a girl who has an alcoholic mother, a dysfunctional family and has to battle cancer. Either of those storylines could have made a great novel but taken together it's way way too much to digest ...
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