Customer Reviews

Above All Others

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I had to think about how to rate this book. The writing is quite beautiful, passionately sensual and seductive, dialogs are witty and intelligent. The story is unusual and fast paced. Now the characters, they are very strong and complex and I think that is where the difference in the previous two reviews come, especially as one gets caught up in the story.

In the beginning, Freddie, the Earl of Moncrief is portrayed as what he is, arrogant, proud, stubborn, yet - rather than forgetting about his illegitimate daughter as would generally happen to the nobility - he does recognize her and takes the responsibility to have her raised on one of his estates. You have to admire him for that.

Katherine Sanderson, newly arrived from the country, is discovered coming to the aid of an accident victim by the Dowager Countess Miriam(Freddie's mom). Miriam recognizes the care and compassion in Katherine and hires her on the spot as governess to her infant grandaughter.

When Freddie, finally gets out to the estate to check on the Governess and his daughter, there is an instaneous attraction from both Katherine and Freddie. Eventually, an accord is reached (rather businesslike) whereby Katherine agrees to sleep with Freddie for a pre-arranged length of time with the provision that she be allowed to remain Julie's governess for as long as Julie needs one. For the next few weeks the passion is HOT and heavy and the reader gets wrapped up in the enjoyment of this couple. Katherine is more than a match for this rake in the bedroom department. Of course, it does not last - Freddie discovers a slight handicap with regard to his daughter and turns into a pompous [person] thinking that he has been deceived - Katherine gets on her high horse when she cannot reason with him and before you know it - they are avoiding each other during the day but still coming together in their passion for each other!

When, Katherine finds out Freddie's plans to send his daughter away, she retaliates. It is a battle of wills - an emotional war that no one wins. Throughout the second half of the book you want to scream at Katherine for her pig-headedness and convince her of her folly! Which by the way is exactly the way the book is written - perhaps so one can learn the lessons presented here.

I don't want to give any more of the plot away, I strongly urge you, to use all means to find a copy of this extremely passionate, sensual, and moving book. It is a keeper and I definitely see myself re-reading this in the future!

The signature style of Karen Ranney is her realism. A lot of romantic fiction writers use similar prose with wimpy women and sterling men but not Karen.

In this story an impoverished daughter of a baron is found in the street by the mother of an Earl. The mother is looking for a governess for her granddaugher that was born out of wedlock.

The daughter of the baron, Katherine, is young but shaped by her experiences. She is sophisticated in the ways of the world which makes her very different than a typical romantic heroine.

The earl, Freddie, is self serving, arrogant and handsome. Unashamed of the choices he has made and unwilling to compromise for a child or for Katherine.

When the two meet the attraction is immediate.
But remember the earl is self-serving and Katherine is no fool.

The story develops from there to be a very real story about love and forgiveness.

I never enjoy giving a book a bad rating. I love reading & most books give me great pleasure, but this story just didn't do it for me. I have read 2 other Karen Ranney books & it seems she has the annoying habit of bringing her lovers together almost immediately in the very beginning of the book & them separating them for the remainder (reuniting them in the last 20pgs or so). KR does write very well & her other 2 books were better done. Above All Others has 2 of the most unlikeable lead characters I've ever read about. Both the hero & heroine are stubborn to a fault, prideful & unreasonable. The heroine is so spiteful & filled w/self-righteousness that I didn't care whether they got back together or not & had to skip pgs just to finish this book (an effort in itself). It seemed amazing that the heroine "hated" the hero & made every effort to keep away from him yet could not resist him sexually & found her self fallling in love w/him (huh?). This book is out of print; do yourself a favor & don't bother trying to get a copy.

One thing I know, I am truly committed to the ultimate success of e-books. Don't get me wrong. I love my print library passionately and add to it regularly. However, I love to read, and I hate to wait. Therefore I always carry a book with me. I used to carry paperbacks with me until I got Paperback Thumb, a malady akin to Tennis Elbow, Runners Knee, Carpal Tunnel, Limbo-er's Sacroiliac. OK, I made the last one up. Then I discovered Kindle.

At my advanced age I found love. My Kindle and I have become inseparable. We travel everywhere together. We stand in line together. We wait in offices together. He sleeps with me. He allows me to make scathing comments about what I'm reading and obligingly retrieves my comments on command. He allows me to shop for books anywhere! I recently downloaded a Bible as I sat in church . . . during the service! I've gone out and bought new purses because some of my old ones are too small for my Kindle. He allows me to highlight particularly delicious passages and retrieves them whenever I wish to be reminded of a particularly apt expression. ". . . stupidity marched in and sat down in the front row of her brain." Who hasn't had that sensation? Or "Time inched by on caterpillar feet." Did I mention he sleeps with me?

Enough. You understand my point of view. I am truly committed to the success of e-books.

Karen Ranney's Above All Others might be divine in print. In fact, I'm sure it is. The characters inexorably pull the reader into their lives . . . they are maddening people, but loveable, nevertheless. The story involves situations not usually seen in Romance novels. I devoured the book even on my Kindle.

However, the e-version of Above All Others was regrettably Below All Others or at best Even With All Others. I have some idea of how involved readying a manuscript for print can be. I know it involves hours of reading and rereading, editing and fact-checking by more than one person. I know it is tedious, tension inducing, neck tightening work. I don't know how e-books are made. The cabbage patch? The stork? The Tooth Fairy?

How ever they are made, that method must be improved. I suspect it must involve more human supervision and less computer program participation. Above All Others contained almost every kind of mistake possible to cram into one book.

In no particular order, I mention a few.
1. The Earl of Montcrief renounces his daughter Julie saying, ". . . My mother, my sister, my grandmother, and all the women in direct descent all share a remarkable familial trait. The two longest fingers on both hands are webbed . . . I should have naturally expected my daughter to conform to that rule." Katherine responds, "You are condemning a child simply because her fingers are not deformed?" Yet throughout the rest of the book Julie is referred to as having a deformity. In fact, later in the book, Freddie notices, "The faint webbing between her fingers was still visible . . ." Which was it? Webbed or not?

2. Besides that, for some unknown reason lines break as in ". . . driver on this

hapless day," or "he glared at the

half-witted, buck-toothed nursery maid" or "she'd kept something of





herself from him." Some breaks were more than a page long. I could find no reason for the breaks in thought and the fact that they existed I found distracting in the extreme since their occurrence was not rare.

3. Apparently the scanner or whatever device translated the book into an e-book occasionally experienced a spelling cramp. "Than" became "then;" "belongings" became "belonging;" strings of verbs in past tense suddenly became present tense as in "knew" became "know."

4. Some words crept in redundantly as in "it was his most foremost weakness."

5. Other times words were omitted without reason. "Why, on God's green earth, had he thought she might possibly been happy to see him?" Where did "have been" go? I'm sure Karen Ranney would preserve the sentence construction "he had thought (that) she might have been." Not so the e-book elves.

6. Homonym Harry struck often. The adverb "past" became the verb "passed" as in "Katherine swept passed him and seated herself..."

7. The E-book brain, I use the term "brain" facetiously, desperately tries to make sense of vocabulary it does not know. Thus "stentorian" became "stenorious."

8. Sometimes the e-translator did not know if the characters were sitting or standing. ". . . it took long moments for her to discern his shadow, seated in the chair . . ." Yet in the very next sentence ". . . she saw his stance." Not "attitude." Not "posture." I might have believed he stood up somewhere in there, but if he did, he had unusually long arms for his "arms [were] laying straight upon the arms of the chair."

9. I got as far as eight kinds of errors without even mentioning "Lie" and "Lay." Arms were lying on the chair armrests. Hens were laying eggs on the seat. I lay my head on my arms and weep as my arms lie on the table. Will "lie" and "lay" never be right?

One or two, even six or eight errors might be tossed off as a mild irritant but forgivable. By the time I reached the last page I had catalogued 111 errors.

If Miss Ranney were a less accomplished author, I would not bother to write a word about this translation. However, the program or person who changed her book to an e-book has done her a grave disservice. The book is better than this mess. She is better than this mess.

this is a hard book to review. This is my first Karen Ranney. While her writing style is above average-a little bit "purple prose" at times, but still good, I could not finish this book-I had to quit it halfway through specifically because of the, in my opinion, unlikeable hero and heroine.

Maybe it's because I'm a mom, but Freddie's attitude towards his children, while like another reviwer mentioned, may be realistic to the time-was frankly horrible. Calling your child an misfit and brat because she was born with a birth defect? I just could not get past the characters horrible, mealy mouthed personality.

The heroine is no better-keeping her child away from it's father, father at one point taking children away because the two couldn't get their act together. I skimmed the last half-they are still fighting and running away from each other, and their CHILDREN, up till the last two pages of the book!?! In modern day-this behavior (using your children as pawns in your battles) would be considered abusive to the children-I certainly do not want to read about it in a romance:(

Because of this behavior, the "love" scenes seemed very ugly to me-they belittled and berated but could only relate to each other in the bedroom?

Women read romances for different reasons-I do to be entertained and relaxed-this book is more "family court" than romance, and in my opinion, for me, not entertaining at all. I'll definately try Miss Ranney again as she is obviously talented, but if you like your characters with some sort or morality or redeeming value, don't look here.

3 stars.

By the end of the book, I was emotionally exhausted. The conflict between Freddie and Katherine seemed too drawn out, covering nearly the second half of the story. I admired the two characters, though. They both had the courage to search inside themselves and admit they were wrong. They were just to proud to do anything about it, which was too bad.

I think the best part about Karen Ranney's writing style is the intense introspection she gives her chararcters...they can delve deep down and do a bit of soul-searching. Most readers may find this tedious, preferring instead to skim ahead to the interactions between hero and heroine, but for me, it is what sets her main characters from being rash, shallow, superficial or just plain boring. I especially like the heroes who attempt to analyze their emotions, or at least, who can step back and review what they did wrong (if they can actually bring themselves to admit it). Freddie did a lot of this, and I ended up liking him in spite of his many deplorable acts of stupidity, stubbornness, cluelessness, even cruelty. Not the most ideally romantic man to graze the pages of a love story...but I learned to deal with it.

Katherine, on the other hand... she was something else. Strong, determined, courageous, and even more stubborn than Freddie. What a pair these two made. I only wish they had spent more time making up instead of constantly sparring. There was a point when I just couldn't feel the love anymore--they've become total strangers to one another.

Overall, I'd say this honestly isn't her best. The style, intensity, and emotional level is there, but was sadly clouded by a huge communication gap between the main characters.

If you're looking for a good read, look no further. If you're looking for sexuality, you can find it here. If you're looking for a story that probes human nature, you can find it here. If you're looking for characters with soul, you can find them here. Then, just when you feel things are finally working out, Ranney throws in a twist and a turn, and you're begging for an ending. Ranney's characters are flawed, human, needy, and in control of themselves...most of the time...readers should take nothing for granted...just read on!

I'm guessing this is one of Ms Ranneys earlier work, because her later books are nothing like this. As many stated here, the heroine and the hero are both unlikeable, her love scenes are lack luster ( 3 scenes in the whole book, rest are just vaguely hinted at ).

Disliking the hero/heroine aside, the main reason why I found this book to be a bore is because there was just way too much internalization. The internal monologue just went on and on without any action.

In a word, this book was just tedious.