Motherless would-be art student Lila Mack is the mixed-up heroine of the sluggish and predictable latest from Cohen (Town House
). Lila lives with her father in Los Angeles, secretly working as a nude model at the local art school and deeply insecure about the fact that her artist mother abandoned her when she was eight. It’s quite clear there’s more to her mother’s story than what Lila’s dad has told her, so it’s not surprising when Lila’s mother shows up and reveals that Lila—once Delilah Blue Lovett—was actually kidnapped by her father. As it happens, there’s a Web site devoted to her kidnapping that she somehow never stumbled across when Googling her mom’s name. Cohen drops readers into a sticky familial morass—Lila’s father has early onset Alzheimer’s, her mother turns out to be quite flighty, the half-sister she never knew she had is more than a little neurotic—that’s tidily complicated by a burgeoning romance with an art student. Unfortunately, the characters are hollow, the plot has too many unlikely developments, and the happy ending is as forced as it is far-fetched. (June)
