A review by hirvimaki
Charade by Sandra Brown

1.0

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.