Upcher's lovers are all star-crossed in this with-it, literate sitcom about who's right for whom. Hope Collins, a high-powered Hamptons real estate agent, is married to husband number two, the helpless/hopeless but charming British Eddie Calder, an editor at a New York publishing house and the father of baby Booty. Hope has two older children eight-year-old Harry and six-year-old Coco by her bounder ex-husband, Craig, now a hotshot Hollywood producer. She still carries a torch for this stinker, who butters her up only so she'll come baby-sit the kids on the rare occasions they see him. Feeling the need for a Mary Poppins to set all right, Hope requires Eddie to find one, and his sister sends along 47-year-old Annabel Quick. Annabel has the training but hasn't worked as a nanny for years; her plan is to come to the U.S. to escape the shambles of her personal life in England. Will she straighten out the disastrous Collins-Calder household and find time for a bit of romance herself? This work is charming, if a bit light, with gentle befuddlement standing in for suspense. Though initially Hope seems to be quite the empty career woman, she grows on the reader, and the kids add a realistic dimension, as do in-law and co-worker problems. While Upcher's characters take a ridiculous amount of time to come to the obvious conclusions, this is still an entertaining ride. (June)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Hamptons real estate agent Hope Collins-Calder can't manage her own life, much less those of her three children four if you count husband No. 2. So, like many other upwardly mobile women, she enlists the services of a nanny. The latest entry in the daycare brigade is misfortune-prone Annabel Quick, late of Cornwall, England. A single and attractive 45, she gladly accepts the offer only to find herself in the midst of a live-action soap opera. Unhappily remarried to a Brit, Hope yearns for the first husband who abandoned her while the children run amuck. Meanwhile, Annabel is attracting men like flies. Since she's never been lucky in love, it doesn't surprise her that she falls for the least suitable candidate. Both Hope and Annabel, so dissimilar on the surface, learn that matters of the heart override logic. By turns touching and amusing, Upcher's fourth novel will make excellent beach reading. [The British-born Upcher once worked in the Hamptons as a nanny for director Mike Nichols. Ed.] Jodi L. Israel, MLS, Jamaica Plain, M.
- Jodi L. Israel, MLS, Jamaica Plain, MA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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