Synopsis
Avery Wilkins is in her prime. She's 30 years old, living in Manhattan, beautiful, smart, and the head of her own cosmetics company, Flair. But her enviable exterior hides deep heartache and painful secrets. Determined to launch a successful perfume, and hopeful that her relationship with handsome and supportive Marcus is getting serious, Avery is chasing her dreams--and running from her traumatic past.
Just when things seem to be on an even keel, Avery is hit with a succession of shocking setbacks, surprises, and betrayals: A drug-addicted colleague who threatens the future of Flair, one boyfriend who is incapable of fidelity, another who may have committed a terrible crime, a long-lost sister who isn't quite who she seems, and most disturbing of all, the sudden appearance of a woman claiming to be Avery's birth mother.
Avery is forced to question the loyalty of friends, lovers, and colleagues, and even her own beliefs about where she came from and who she is. Through it all, she draws on her ambition, grit, and cunning to outsmart her enemies, keep her company afloat, and protect herself from emotional meltdown. But when her archenemy resorts to kidnapping, has Avery finally met her match
Dramatic, sexy, and fun, Charm! is a wickedly entertaining roman a clef by All My Children favorite Kendall Hart. Brimming with scandal, romance, backstabbing, and unpredictable twists, it is every bit as shocking and captivating as the character who wrote it.
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About the Author
All My Children's Kendall Hart, played by Alicia Minshew, is the daughter of the legendary Erica Kane. The founder and owner of Fusion Cosmetics, Kendall lives in Pine Valley with her husband and two children. A family crisis spurred her to write Charm! This is her first novel.
Reviews
A conniving character given to getting into steamy situations on the daytime soap All My Children, the fictional Kendall Hart is here given a novelist's voice, and the ghostwriter (or writers) who produced this sticky tie-in get it right. The novel's conceit is that the book is Kendall Hart's roman à clef, written to set All My Children's town of Pine Valley on its ear. Kendall Hart's stand-in for this fiction (i.e., the fictional author Kendall's fictional avatar in the novel) is a sweet yet assertive young woman, Avery Wilkins, who runs her own New York–based cosmetics company, Flair, and is launching a new perfume—Charm!—that she hopes will put her on the map. When Avery first founded the company with financial backer Finn Adams, a softhearted smart man she later fell in love with, she never thought that he would die and leave his share of the company to his Paris Hilton–type daughter, Parker. Parker's drug and alcohol binging at late-night glitterati parties endanger the reputation of Flair and its new perfume, and a mysterious phone call to Avery from a manipulative woman claiming to be Avery's mother (a nod to Susan Lucci's character, Erica Kane) throws everything into a heady cloud of smoke. Romance aficionados will find Avery's two love affairs (with a dashing newsmagazine producer and a quick-witted yet sensitive billionaire, natch) intoxicating, but the denouement lacks punch—perhaps because soaps never have to come up with an ending. (Feb.)
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Tune into All My Children these days, and you’ll learn that Kendall Hart, daughter of Erica Kane, has written a book published by Hyperion (both ABC and Hyperion are owned by Disney). And, sure enough, reality mirroring fiction, here’s that book, written by Kendall Hart. Those who watch the show know that despite the stress of running a cosmetics company, overseeing her son’s cochlear implant, and fretting over the fact that her husband was trapped in a mine shaft for a month (with her best friend/worst enemy), Kendall is very excited about the publication of her book, a roman à clef. Viewers will see some of Kendall and Erica in the book, but those who don’t follow the show won’t feel a burning need to tune in to pick up the backstory. The writing is what one might expect from a busy mom–tycoon: slapdash cardboard characters and soap-opera plotting. The target audience is clearly fans of the show who have trouble distinguishing between everyday reality and soap reality, but the story might also appeal to those who can tolerate the low end of chick lit. --Ilene Cooper
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