The Jewels of Tessa Kent (Mass Market Paperback)

by Judith Krantz (Author)
Key Phrases: Tessa Kent, New York, Luke Blake (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
From a strand of understated Tiffany pearls, bought with Tessa Kent's first earnings as an actress, to the flash of honey-green emeralds slung around her neck by her Aussie mogul husband, Luke Blake, Tessa's gems are the tangible sign of her stardom and power over men. But Krantz (who justifiably claims that this novel "beats with a bigger heart" than her others, most recently Spring Collection) digs beneath the surfaces she unabashedly celebrates and comes up with a few metaphorical diamonds. Chief among them is Maggie, the daughter to whom Tessa gives birth at 14. (In keeping with the contemporary mandate to remind readers that no condomless sex is safe, conception occurs even though young football hero Mark O'Malley doesn't penetrate Tessa's hymen.) Tessa's mother, dour Agnes Hovath, satisfies both her Catholic faith and her ambitions for gorgeous Tessa by bringing up Maggie as her own. Luke is so obsessed with the jewel of Tessa's virginity (surgically restored postpartum) that Tessa does not dare to claim Maggie as her offspring even when her parents are killed in an accident shortly after Tessa and Luke's wedding, hosted by the Rainiers in Monaco. Five-year-old Maggie is raised grudgingly by Luke's ineffectual stepbrother, Tyler, and his money-hungry wife, Madison. Only their son, Barney, cares about Maggie. In one of the novel's best touches, Krantz adroitly charts the gradual progression of the tykes' friendship as it evolves into camaraderie, lust and married love. But it's the relationship between Tessa and Maggie that is the moral proving ground and plot driver of the story. For all the Hollywood dazzle, sexy shenanigans, bobbing balloons of good fortune punctured by the stab of mortality, this is a romance of motherhood in all its full if tarnished glory. Major ad/promo; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selections.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
Until Maggie is nearly grown, she thinks that glamorous movie star Tessa is her big sister, but when she learns that Tessa is really her mother, she breaks off relations in a fury. Will Tessa win her daughter back? Only Krantz knows for sure.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 468 pages
• Publisher: Bantam; First Thus edition (November 2, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553561375
• ISBN-13: 978-0553561371
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #862,721 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Detailed subworlds, but one fatal flaw, January 6, 2000

By	Mrs. Phillipa M. Sidle (Oxford United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Judith Krantz is an extremely skilled writer with that genuinely, authorly flair for creating subworlds on her own terms - a talent possessed by any writer worth reading, from Dickens to Agatha Christie, whatever the genre or actual literary merit of his or her output. I read The Jewels of Tessa Kent with as much enjoyment as all her other works, very little more or less, since she is if nothing else consistent and the predictability of her formula - if you like this sort of thing, as I do - is part of the attraction. She is very good at drawing a detailed and superficially convincing picture of a specialised environment or social situation - in this case, the worlds of film-making, auction houses and applied Catholicism - and, despite the superabundance of positives and superlatives in her novels (nobody is ever just slightly beautiful, or a little bit rich, or reasonably good at what they do) she always includes a couple of entertaining vignettes of nasty, obsessed characters. Unfortunately, however, her great weakness seems to be an inability to portray a convincing romantic relationship. Her heroines generally fall madly in reciprocated love at first sight and marry within a week, in a way that never seems remotely plausible.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars UGH UGH UGH!, April 22, 2001

By	D. Rizzo (United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Is it me, or are Judith Krantz novels becoming more tedious with the passage of time? Is my one guilty literary pleasure petering out? First, there was the unparalleled Cinderella-ism Scruples, a sample of rich excessiveness, indeed the book that gave hedonism a new name, for which thousands of readers rejoiced. Princess Daisy continued the pattern of Krantzism... outrageously beautiful heroines, both wicked and noble men, unyielding evil and brutishness by way of conflict, and the eventual emergence of the woman victorious... easily identifiable and tantalizingly reliable.

So what's happening? The Jewels of Tessa Kent didn't hit one resonant note. The Jewels of Tessa Kent, in fact, seemed to be a bit of fluff more along the lines of that old chestnut Danielle Steele (who I believe fully writes her books by tape recorder off of the top of her bouffant head) instead of a finely honed Krantz-terpiece. I remember feeling that way about Spring Collection and that other Krantz novel, the one with the photographers that was so insipid I can't even remember the title.

Frankly, the only good thing to come lately off of the pen of Judith Krantz is her autobiography, Confessions of a Nice Jewish Girl. Want to read some Krantz? Read THAT. Skip THIS.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Magic, February 23, 2001

By	"bijucu" (freeville, ny United States) - See all my reviews

At the beginning of this novel, Tessa Kent is but a 14-year-old extraordinarily beautiful girl whose mother lives only for the day when Tessa will become a movie star.

However due to a one-night indiscretion Tessa becomes pregnant and the family moves to another city. There, in secrecy, Tessa gives birth to a little girl (Maggie) whom her parents decide to raise as their own.

Tessa is still under twenty when she wins an Oscar for the best supporting actress and from then on her star continues to rise spectaculously.

Soon after she gets married her parents die in a car accident. Tessa's husband doesn't know her secret and so Maggie is brought up by a cold, unsympathetic couple (relatives of Tessa's husband).

Tessa becomes a widow in the meantime and, when Maggie is 18, she decides to tell her everything but Maggie finds out from another source and decides never to speak to her mother again.

A few years pass and special circumstances make Tessa desperately try to make peace with her daughter... if it's not already too late.

I must admit I am a big fan of Judith Krantz and I read all her novels. Every one of them is magic, glamorous and has some inner joy that willy-nilly rubs out on you.

The old magic is still here in this book, but not nearly as much as in the other novels.

Also there are far less people and secondary story lines, something I regret.

All in all, a book not to be missed!