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Summer Blowout

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Bella Shaughnessy is addicted to lipstick with names like My Chihuahua Bites and Kiss My Lips, an occupational hazard, since she works as a stylist and makeup artist for her family's small chain of beauty salons in Marshbury, Massachusetts, along with her four half-brothers and -sisters. The owner is her father, Lucky Shaughnessy, a gregarious, three-times-divorced charmer with Donald Trump hair, who is obsessed with all things Italian and still carries a torch for his first wife, Bella's mother. After Bella's own marriage flames out spectacularly when her half-sister runs off with her husband, Bella decides she has seen enough of the damage love can do. She makes a vow: no more men.

Then Bella meets a cute entrepreneur at a college fair, and despite their bickering, they can't seem to stay away from each other. He also gives her a brilliant business idea, one that just might allow her to share her makeup expertise with the world. A small, well-tressed dog finds her way into her life, and her heart, and she decides to chance that, too. When the whole clan heads to Atlanta for a big Southern wedding, sparks fly—in a summer blowout no one will ever forget.

This hilarious, rambunctious novel is pure Claire Cook: full of juicy conflict and unconditional love.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 24, 2008
      Cook updates the themes of love and disenchantment that drove Life’s a Beach
      and Must Love Dogs
      in her latest beacher. Bella Shaughnessy, a makeup artist whose solace in times of hardship is finding just the right lipstick to match her mood, gets a divorce and quits men after discovering that her husband of 10 years has been seeing her younger half-sister, Sophia. During a wedding job, she gets stuck with dog-sitting Precious (who “looked kind of like a flying squirrel”) and quickly gets so attached that she takes drastic measures to keep the dog. Can other kinds of attachment be far behind, as cute and easygoing Sean Ryan enters the picture? Sufficient comedy and romance keep readers entertained until the last page.

    • Library Journal

      Starred review from June 15, 2008
      Lipstick rules in this sunny romance tucked inside a Boston family's chain of beauty salons. Recently divorced makeup artist Bella Shaughnessy is going down swinging as she reacts to newcomer Sean Ryan and the gnawing possibility that developers are sabotaging her family's original shop. Cook's ("Life's a Beach") ability to make families' foibles ring trueand funnyensures a delightful read. Snap this one up and enjoy the makeup advice.

      Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      May 1, 2008
      Bella Shaughnessy and her large extended family, including ex-wives and half-siblings, all work in her fathers chain of Boston salons as hairdressers and makeup artists. While business is up, the same cannot be said for Bella, since her half-sister Sophia is now dating her ex-husband Craig. Sophia also gets all the good clients, prepping senators for TV while Bella is stuck with ungrateful brides who leave their dogs and wild kids with her to babysit. She meets an entrepreneur named Sean Ryan at a career fair who gets under her skin as he simultaneously gives her an idea for a business venture to separate her from her crowded family of stylists. Bella struggles to find her place within her family and ease herself into the idea of a new relationship while always finding the right shade of lipstick for her mood. A brisk story, Summer Blowout is primed, like Cook's previous novel Must Love Dogs (2002), to become a big-screen romantic comedy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)

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