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REVIEWS
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From The Post and Courier Charleston.net
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From Publishers Weekly
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A love triangle finally gets resolved on the exotic island of Zanzibar. Successful magazine writer Peter Beckett is there to interview a movie star on location, but his real mission is to persuade the film's producer, Mona Stern, to put an end to their occasional trysts and get serious. Peter's already married and a father, but he's been obsessed with ambitious, edgy Mona for two decades, including that brief period when he dated her high school best friend, sweet, sincere Hannah Pearce. Hannah, who hasn't spoken to Mona in 18 years, is also in Zanzibar, scouting merchandise for her Northern California trinket store and dodging her well-meaning boyfriend's campaign for marriage and kids. When Mona and Hannah bump into each other on the street, they attempt an awkward reconciliation, and all three meet one evening for drinks by the ocean. To complicate matters further, shortly before leaving for Zanzibar, Mona received a visit from the son she gave up for adoption, who may be Peter's. Despite the soap opera overtures and a coffee vs. tea reductionism of Mona and Hannah, Kusel (Other Fish in the Sea) manages to keep her story aimed at self-acceptance, female friendship and the art of apology.
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Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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From Booklist
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When it comes to love and friendship, the past can truly come back to haunt us. When powerful film-producer Mona and her old high-school friend, Hannah, a health-nut import-store owner, run into one another in Zanzibar, they must figuratively and literally face the man who drove them apart. Peter, a suave journalist 10 years older, wooed and bedded both women back when in high school. But he was Hannah's boyfriend then, and when she found out about Mona's betrayal, their friendship was severed. Hannah, it turns out, never really got over Peter, and now these feelings are crippling a new relationship with her loving boyfriend, Luke. The African backdrop provides an unusual setting for this light and airy romantic melodrama, although the novel is weighed down by clunky descriptions and pinched dialogue. Still, Kusel does well with the details of these tangled relationships, and the story picks up nicely as the trio moves toward a complex reconciliation. For fans of prime-time soaps.
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Misha Stone Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.
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"Hat Trick is a sexy triumph of a first novel, a triangle of three marvelously drawn characters who come fully to life as they come of age. Kudos for Kusel."
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Mark Nykanen, Author of Search Angel
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"How can three entangled lovers with their sexy games, cruel secrets, and comic misjudgments-in exotic Zanzibar, no less-be so thoroughly, unerringly human that the close of their story finds you gazing at yourself in the mirror with considerable suspicion? I don't know, but in Lisa Kusel's inventive telling, they are. And you do."
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Wylene Dunbar, Author of My Life with Corpses
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"Lisa Kusel's ambitious debut novel brims with heart and heartache. Anyone who's ever had-and lost-their first love as well their best friend, will find themselves on these pages."
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Hilary de Vries, Author of So Five Minutes Ago and The Gift Bag Chronicles
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