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Publishers Weekly May 15, 2006 Ann Roth, 30, is living it up as an entertainment reporter for an L.A. celeb-gossip rag, hobnobbing with stars as she chases down the latest "big get" in Heller's latest entertaining romp (after An Ex to Grind). But trouble looms when the next big get turns out to be the famously grouchy, media-hating actor Malcolm Goddard, whose unwillingness to talk costs Ann her job. She moves back to her small Missouri hometown and gets a surprise second shot at her career when an incredible coincidence sees Malcolm delivered incognito to the local hospital. A former classmate of Ann's who is now a hospital bigwig (and who has the hots for Ann) tries to impress her by sharing the secret of Goddard's presence. She scores face time with the actor by signing up for the hospital's volunteer program, which leads to unforeseen complications of the heart. Though Heller has a tendency to sum up the morals of her story in pat sentences ("The patients at Heartland General were beginning to teach me just how lucky I was"), she makes up for it with quirky, hooks-in-you prose. The ending is an inevitably happy one, but the road to it is full of twists and turns. Booklist June 1, 2006 Ann Roth has her dream job, interviewing celebrities in Hollywood for a popular magazine. Glad to have escaped Missouri, she is good at her job but now has to prove herself to her new editor by interviewing the famously private Malcolm Goddard. But he refuses to grant her an interview, and she returns to her hometown to rusticate with her overly phobic family only to discover that Malcolm has secretly checked into the local hospital. Ann volunteers there so she can interview him, not realizing how volunteering will change her and how befriending the serious movie star will change him. Heller dishes up a gem of a summer read filled with insider Hollywood snippets and heartwarming moments. Library Journal July 1, 2006 Heller (An Ex To Grind) fuses the seemingly unrelated worlds of celebrity gossip magazines and volunteerism. Ann Roth is a 30-year-old small-town Missourian who relocates to Los Angeles to take a job as an entertainment reporter for Famous magazine. In trying to land an interview with actor Malcolm Goddard, a man who considers reporters parasites, Ann pulls out all the stops. But her fear of flying prevents her from boarding Malcolm's Cessna, and she is fired. She returns to Missouri to regroup; in a strange twist of fate, that's where Malcolm ends up to undergo treatment for a heart condition. Ann knows Malcolm is coming before he arrives and secures a position as a volunteer at the hospital to get close to him. With Ann pretending not to be Ann and Malcolm pretending not to be Malcolm (he's assumed an alias to elude the press), they really hit it off, but will their relationship survive when Malcolm finds out what Ann is up to? This is a fun and fast-paced read with a likable protagonist who has her quirks but ends up finding her life's true calling and her perfect match. Recommended for all public libraries. RomanceJunkies.com October, 2006 by Roberta Austin Ann Roth has worked hard to move from the tiny Midwestern town of her childhood to become a journalist for the celebrity magazine "Famous". She prides herself on being fair and ethical. That doesn't help when her new blowhard boss tells her she needs to develop a killer instinct to go after the "big get" interview of Malcolm Goddard. Malcolm refuses to give interviews and hates the media. Ann pulls some tricky moves with his publicist and is given an interview on one condition: Ann must conduct it while Malcolm is flying his small engine plane. Ann does her best, but at the last minute can't get on the plane. Fear of flying is at the top of her long list of phobias. Ann's boss fires her and she decides to go back to her hometown to work for the local paper and plan her future. Fate smiles on Ann because Malcolm is coming to her town incognito to be treated for some heart problems. Ann signs up as a volunteer at the hospital. She believes this will be the best way to gain access to Malcolm and get her career back again. Along the way, Ann learns that by serving others we receive much more than we give. With her lucky 13th novel, Jane Heller has another hit romantic comedy. We can laugh along with Ann as she deals with her phobias and the curve balls life throws her. Malcolm seems like the typical Hollywood "bad boy", but the author lets us see that even famous celebrities are just people and have to deal with the same emotional baggage from the past as the rest of us. At the same time, they must live their lives in "fishbowls". The author says she volunteered at a local hospital to research this book and her life was changed, just as her heroine's was. She hopes her readers will laugh and have fun with this novel, but also take away a need to pursue volunteering. I have been a big Jane Heller fan for a while and SOME NERVE is an excellent example of why she continues to be popular with so many readers. Santa Barbara News-Press November 19, 2007 As the holiday season bears down, a little light reading is just the ticket for a momentary escape into the fantasy world of chick lit. Santa Barbara's Jane Heller, one of the queens of chick lit, aims higher than the usual smarm. With "Some Nerve," she delivers a wicked meringue of a novel with a transparent plot and the standard girl-gets-what-she-deserves-in-her-heart ending. As in the best of these books, the fun lies not in the destination but in the trip itself. Much chick lit is gosh-and-golly wallow in the romantic preoccupations of quavering semiprofessional young women who yearn, in their heart of hearts, for a good man above all else. They don't want to give up the careers they're struggling for, but, when push comes to shove, if they can't have it all, they'll settle for the guy. Jane Heller's heroine, Ann Roth, hails from a backwater Missouri town, but she's managed to make a life as a Hollywood entertainment reporter for a major celebrity magazine that's a cut above the tabloids featuring rumored divorce and cellulite. She makes her living doing fairly soft interviews with and features on the glitzy, beautiful stars we all pine after, and it's precisely what she has wanted to do since she was a girl. She has a promiscuous but loyal best girl friend and a charming gay neighbor, and Ann's reinvented herself far from the phobic home she grew up in. What could be better? A voracious new editor takes over, and what he wants is not softball interviews but someone who will do whatever it takes to come back with the killer "get," the brightest, most difficult star waxing at the moment. That would be Malcolm Goddard, gorgeous, arrogant and disdainful of the press. Sent on this do-or-be-fired mission, Ann does her best. She orders a Zabar's cheesecake, a fond memory from Goddard's New York childhood, to be delivered to his Spago dinner party. Suffice it to say all does not go well, and Ann winds up wearing a reasonable portion of the confection. Using her wiles and savvy, she does wangle an interview, but there's a catch: It must take place in Goddard's small private plane as it cruises the SoCal skies. Goddard knows that Ann's family phobias include flying; it's only intense and serial application of Bloody Marys that gets her in the air with hundreds of others in planes with greater survival records than single-engine Cessnas. Within days, Ann has retreated to Missouri and is writing freelance profiles for the local paper. Interviews for these exciting pieces begin with questions like, "How old were you when you first realized that you wanted to be a chimney sweep?" She's also living with what passes for the family matriarch: an agoraphobic mother, a Lysol-obsessed grandmother and an aunt with her own ornate set of phobias and issues. Wouldn't you know it, the local hospital, besides doing a bang-up hysterectomy business, has a cardiac department that rivals the best. When Malcolm Goddard passes out on the set of his newest film, he asks to be sent to someplace quiet and competent for cardiac tests and treatment, and, of course, it's Ann's local hospital. Our gal Ann instantly volunteers as an adult candy striper with the goal to get her interview, and the fun is on. She learns a great deal about life and values, about herself and the value of her Missouri roots, about Malcolm Goddard as both man and star, and about what she really wants to do with her life. There's plenty of deception, more than enough misunderstandings, and, eventually, after everyone has settled on what they want most, a happy ending. For everyone who deserves it, that is. If you forgive the jumps in logic and the morals summarized in one sentence, Ms. Heller delivers a lively read and joyful digs at the Midwest (land of "casseroles made with cream of mushroom soup and needlepoint pillows with bumper-sticker type sayings on them") and Hollywood (land of healers sporting "two gold hoop earrings, one in each nostril" and "TV bachelorettes who claim they're in it for true love, then pose nude for 'Playboy.'") Some Nerve isn't literature, but, for those so inclined, it will provide fast-paced escape and brisk humor. |
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