February 24th, 2010 — 3 Stars, Contemporary, Divorced, Guest Reviews, M-O, Secret Agent, United States of America
By: Cara Lynn, guest reviewer
The Marriage Game by Fern Michaels is a light summer read.
I figured by the description it would have some humor, and it does.
Samantha Rainford returns from her honeymoon to find she has been served divorce papers. She is both shocked and heart broken. She is going to be paid off with a check for $5000. When she visits the attorney, she learns there are three other wives before her who have all been treated the same way. She determines that she will not get mad, she will get even. She enlists the aid of the other wives to extract their revenge.
Meantime, she and a girlfriend attend an FBI training school -- seriously, how remotely possible is that! where they both flunk out. But they've learned a thing or two.
Then they are recruited for a secret ops camp deep in the mountains of NC. How Samantha gets the better of her recruiter is one of the funnier portions of the book. The only way the two of them will join is if the other wives come along too.
The cast of characters in the mountain includes the head trainer who is endangered by his past if he comes off the mountain (Pappy), and the cook (who turns out to be his father), a dog that is part wolf (Alpha), and the other teams that are being trained.
This section of the book is interesting as the characters are developed. The better part of a year is spent on the mountain. Samantha passes with flying colors, but Pappy doesn't want her to have the life that he has had. He is in love with her, though she doesn't know it. And he doesn't know she was ever Mrs. Rainford.
How she and the other women -- they find he has a number of other ex-wives that they find out about, and that might not be all, who are also included in this -- exact their revenge is a cute part of the story. And how it interweaves with Pappy's story is believable.
I give it a 3.
I've never read any of her books before, but judging from this, I will see if I enjoy the others as much.
With all that FBI and special agent secret op going on The Marriage Game sounds like a cross with Miss Congeniality. What do you think?
Buy: The Marriage Game
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Originally posted 2008-08-11 05:26:24. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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October 25th, 2009 — 4 Stars, Book Review, Category, Contemporary, Great Britain, M-O, Travel, Writer
First off I don’t get the title. I suppose I’m missing something, but nevertheless it’s very strange and I couldn’t spot a correlation to the story.
This book is another Harlequin Presents oldie. The hero is two years younger than the heroine’s father and more than double the heroine’s age. The author made a strong case for their romance while she built up the hero’s uncertainty and self-disgust until it fractures and breaks apart in a shower of pretty sparkles. It’s very rewarding.
Our heroine is seventeen and made a point early on in the novel about the arrival of a new stepfather. She’s no longer really welcomed. Her mother in a few short pages makes it plain in several ways that Tamsyn is an intruder in her own home. (She ignores Tamsyn or sends her from the room. She talks to Charles and doesn’t talk to Tamsyn the way she used to, etc.)
She’s leaves for Wales when her mother and stepfather take off for their honeymoon. This is the first time the heroine has ever really spent time with her father. She’s surprised to find her stepmother ten months pregnant (joke). She’s taken from the airport in Wales to her father’s home by her stepmother’s cousin, Hywel Benedict. He’s a writer and a preacher (after a fashion, he stands up and gives sermons in place of a real one because the town is so small.) Tamsyn finds him fascinating and frustrating and the rest as we say is history.
Rating: 4 Stars
Buy: Chase a Green Shadow
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August 28th, 2009 — 3.5 Stars, A-C, ARC, Business, Contemporary, Handicap, Medical, Poor Eyesight, Scarred Hero, United States of America
Healing Luke is a modern day retelling of the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. It’s quick and lighthearted with a few gems revealed towards the end on love and relationships.
Luke Morgan was on a boat when it blew up leaving him with burns, one eye, and no thumb on one hand. He feels his life is ruined forever and is scarred to go to his occupational therapist for fear of failing. Angry and bitter, Luke is sinking fast and his brother and dad have no idea how to help him cope.
Abby Stanford is visiting Florida on what should have been her honeymoon. She’s doing all the trips and outings they had planned, including snorkeling alone. She meets Luke and is surprised and hurt by his antagonism. An occupational therapist herself, albeit with a different focus than what Luke needs, Abby longs to be useful and to help.
Luke watches his brother Aaron flirt with Abby and jealousy rears its ugly head. He wants Abby for himself but is no longer confident of his appeal to women and to one woman in particular.
I loved the workings of the Morgan family: Luke, withdrawn and wounded; Aaron, flirtatious and outgoing; Bart, quiet and unassuming. Abby was such a great fit with them and I really enjoyed seeing that in a romance.
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Buy: Healing Luke
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April 11th, 2009 — 3 Stars, Book Review, Children, Clumsy Heroine, Contemporary, Pregnant, Stephenie Meyer, United States of America, Vampire, Virgin Hero, Virgin Heroine, Werewolf, Young Adult
I was very excited to get my Breaking Dawn in the mail from Amazon. They managed to get it to me one day before they told me that it would arrive on my doorstep and I devoured the novel, all 700+ pages, in two days, which is consistent with how I’ve read the other three that came before.
The novel did many things I did not expect, and one thing in particular that I did expect. This review will contain spoilers, so read at your own risk. Suffice it to say I give Breaking Dawn four stars.
The wedding, surprisingly takes place within the first hundred pages. I thought that it would happen at the end after Jacob did something to delay it so he could win Bella for his own. This is not the case. The wedding is lovely and Bella gets through it just fine and afterwards can’t believe how uptight she was about the whole thing.
On their honeymoon, Bella and Edward make love successfully; unfortunately the scene fades to black, which annoyed me. The morning after Bella stirs and is blissfully happy but sore, Edward is composed and staring blankly at the ceiling and ruins her buzz by killing the mood. He won’t make love to her again, claims that she’s lying when she says she’s feeling fine—no great, all because he can see how rough he was with her. Bella only recalls that he held her tighter when she wanted him to, etc. Edward is sickened by how much of her skin is covered in bruises that match his hands.
Luckily, Bella manages to break him out of his funk through the use of sexy lingerie Alice packed for her and some innocent seduction. The second and third and so on times, Edward manages to ruin furniture instead of Bella’s skin, making him extremely satisfied… Bella too.
Meanwhile, I started to think about how much food Bella was consuming and came to the conclusion before it was revealed that she was pregnant. Her pregnancy is ridiculously accelerated and Edward freaks out. Bella knowing something is up, makes plans of her own to protect the life inside her and calls Rosalie for help, making the female vampire happy for the first time with her decisions.
From here the novel switches from Bella’s point of view to Jacob’s, which made me call up my friend and ask for some spoilers because I just don’t like the werewolf. During this part of the novel we witness Bella’s pregnancy, a break in the werewolf tribe as Jacob takes partial leadership, and Bella becoming very attached to Jacob’s presence.
The pregnancy takes a lot out of Bella until they realize that because the child is part vampire Bella’s diet needs to change from human food to a liquid diet of blood. Drinking blood immediately affects Bella’s health for the better, but also that of the baby’s. Every time the child moves inside Bella it leaves bruises on her skin and potentially breaks a rib in the process.
Edward is seriously going crazy and blames himself at this point and goes as far as offering Bella to Jacob if she really wanted a child as long as she’d be willing to give their child up as it was hurting her so much. Of course Jacob thinks on the idea and manages to bring it up to Bella who denies that its children she wants so much as her and Edward’s child that she wants.
Bella dies during birth, but luckily Edward manages to successfully turn her into a vampire while Jacob does CPR to keep the venomous blood flowing through her veins before it activates. Jacob leaves when he thinks it’s failed and goes downstairs where he intends to kill the child, now in Rosalie’s care. He never does, because once he lays eyes on their baby girl he bonds with her. This ends Jacob’s point of view in the story and switches back to Bella’s viewpoint.
The rest of the story deals with what I thought would happen to postpone the wedding—the Volturi are coming and they plan to execute the Cullen family for their Immortal Child (which is not what Edward and Bella’s child is per se, the term refers to something else). Alice and Jasper leave after Alice gives some very stern instructions to the family. The whole Western hemisphere is being herded together to witness the growth and humanity of the child.
It ends happily and Bella has amazing control on her thirst and on her special gift. I love the last few scenes between her and Edward. I am looking forward to reading the series again from Edward’s point of view, starting with Midnight Sun.
What did you think of the series ending?
Rating: 3 Stars
Originally posted 2008-08-13 05:03:13. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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