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3.65 AVERAGE
3.65 AVERAGE
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Really liked this book! However there were several characters that made it difficult to keep track of, some with very little importance- she could have left a few of them out. Still a great read overall.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Normally I like Sandra Brown's books. They're a little fluffy, but have their thriller/mystery elements. Charade is one of the few exceptions. Cat Delaney is obnoxious, screechy, and irritating. The so called "hero" has his issues, but I never really got a hero vibe from him. Probably didn't help that I had the big bad figured out way before the halfway point of the book.
The characters and the world Sandra Brown established were wonderful! But, after a certain amount of pages, I noticed the writing became sparse and depended largely on dialogue. This is especially jarring compared to the prologue and the first four chapters, which I felt was much better thought out and written in comparison.
While I understand that she may have deliberately left things up to the reader's imagination to make it more immersive, it felt as though she relied too much on the reader using their imagination to fill in the blanks which might leave them feeling out-of-place or even bored instead; at least, that's the way I felt. Frustrated, I decided I could no longer continue.
While I understand that she may have deliberately left things up to the reader's imagination to make it more immersive, it felt as though she relied too much on the reader using their imagination to fill in the blanks which might leave them feeling out-of-place or even bored instead; at least, that's the way I felt. Frustrated, I decided I could no longer continue.
Another winner from Sandra Brown, liked reading about heart transplants.
Dated, stilted, and just a bit too rape-y, an otherwise interesting plot idea - someone is killing off heart transplant recipients - is almost completely lost in a deluge of hokey, caricaturized "relationships" that would be uncomfortable on a Telemundo telenovela. Brown couldn't decide if she was writing a romance, a thriller, or a mystery and it just gets too jumbled to squeeze any enjoyment out of it. By the middle of a tangle of red-herring stories you know who the murderer is with the dreadful realization that you've still got 250 pages to go with none of the caricatures, er, characters having a clue. The big reveal, involving an unbelievable number of characters just showing up and a weirdly timed bubble bath, is so anti-climatic that you'd think it was one of the love scenes. Unless you are a die-hard fan of 80's saccharine romance (with the manly men and swooning (or catty) women), you can give this one a pass.
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Even up until about five or six years ago, I still preferred romance in my violence over violence in my romance.
For the full review - including a slight digression into levels of ridiculousness - follow the link to That's What She Read.
For the full review - including a slight digression into levels of ridiculousness - follow the link to That's What She Read.