Book Reviews
The exuberant and charming Claire Cook (ask anyone who saw her at this spring's Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival) is one of the sassiest and funniest creators of contemporary women's fiction.... Summer Blowout, is every bit as much fun as Must Love Dogs and Life's a Beach.
New Orleans Time-Picayune
Nobody does the easy-breezy beach book with a lighter hand than Claire Cook.... In Summer Blowout...you soon find yourself on another of Cook's delightful tours of the funny side of big family life.
Hartford Courant
You won ’t have to don your sunglasses for this sunny delight by the author of Must Love Dogs. Makeup artist Bella Shaughnessy has a thing for lipstick—with names like Catfight, Damaged and Revive—a family that gives new meaning to the expression blended (thanks to a half-sister who’s dating Bella’s ex-husband) and a ban on men (see half-sister). Which is too bad, because she’s just met Sean Ryan, an entrepreneur with sparkling eyes and a proposal, business that is—or is it?—for Bella. As refreshing as an icy drink on a sultry day.
Family Circle
A brisk story, Summer Blowout is primed to become a big-screen romantic comedy. —Hilary Hatton
Booklist
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.
Publishers Weekly
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 true—and funny—ensures a delightful read. Snap this one up and enjoy the makeup advice.
Teresa Jacobsen - Library Journal
Cook's fifth, about a family of beauticians, falls as flat as a badly layered mullet. The formulaic chick-lit elements are duly provided: family craziness, brand-name-dropping, egregious infidelity. Lucky Larry Shaughnessy gave Italian names to his five children and to the chain of beauty salons he runs in the Boston area. Why? Well, he's been an "Italiophile" ever since he spent his first honeymoon in Tuscany, and "how much money could you really charge at Salon de Seamus?" Daughter (and narrator) Bella recently lost her husband Craig to her half-sister Sophia. This makes work awkward, since all of Lucky's offspring, along with two of his ex-wives, are employed in the salons. Makeup artist and lipstick addict Bella meets rich, handsome Sean Ryan at a college admission fair where she's providing makeovers and he's test-marketing a "college application survival kit." They exchange wisecracks and snappy comebacks, but not, just yet, bodily fluids. Burned by bad relationships, both have commitment issues. Among the other developments: Bella, assigned to prettify a bridal party, dognaps the bride's neglected tiny terrier, dyes and crops the dog's fur and renames her Cannoli. There are a few funny bits, as when the Shaughnessys, including gay stylist Mario and his spouse Todd, perform a hair intervention to force Lucky to give up his Donald Trump coiffure. But the climactic ensemble scene in Atlanta, where the family congregates for a nephew's wedding, is not the madcap laugh-fest it labors to be. Nor is eminently self-satisfied Bella the sort of wryly self-deprecating protagonist the genre requires. Intense beauty-product placement may be this novel's onlyselling point.
Kirkus Reviews