Customer Reviews

The Awakening

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I could read this book over and over again. It's funny and sweet. I love that this book is connected to both the Princess and a knight in shining armor. Both J.T. Montgomery (J.T. Montgomery is the son Hank Montgomery and Amanda and he's in the Princess)and Hank Montgomery fall in love with uptight women. In the awaking Hank Montgomery of rescues Amanda from a life were she is being controled by her father & husband to be and shows her what passion is. He helps her become the woman she was meant to be. You need to read the Princess to see how free she becomes. I love this book. I love the background characters as well.

Jude Deveraux developed Amanda and Hank's personalities and motivations very convincingly, to the point where you feel as though you know them well enough to be friends by the time you finish the book. The two meet and the sparks fly from the first page they meet. Ms. Deveraux writes some of the wittiest dialogue around -- I was laughing out loud at times. One of the things I liked best about this book is the way the author wove the emotional storyline with such a light touch -- I was engrossed with the relationship between the hero and heroine and truly felt as if I knew them both. The Awakening was an emotional roller coaster, and I felt all the pain and joy they did. I was so engrossed, I read it in a day. The love scenes are ample & steamy, and the plot is a good one. A fast paced book with an intricate plot that I cannot help but enjoy. The Awakening has a strong (but not obnoxious) heroine who is in no way ordinary, a back story which is compelling but doesn't get in the way of the love story, and of course a wonderful hero.

Okay...i could write the best summary ever and desperatly try to persuade you JD fans out there who haven't read this or you new comers who haven't read this, that it's worth the time, but really all i should have to say is that this is another heart throb, with a sexy Montgomery. Now if you've read my reviews before you've noticed every Montgomery book i've read, well i loooovvvveee the Montgomery clan. They are hott, sensitive in their own way, protective, real family men, well let's just say they are every woman's dream come true. So give it a try, pop a bag of popcorn, settle in you're fav reading spot (of course you have to be in you're pj's to get the full relaxed feel lol) and send you're self on a romantic trip. These books are so good, it'll make u jelouse!

I love all of Jude Deveraux's work, and _The Awakening_ was no exception. I was at first a little dissapointed with the begining though. Amanda is really too stiff, and Hank was not sympathetic enough. He just automatically put her in the catagorie of a prig who couldn't feel anything. Amanda took a little too long to wake up and see the world. She's run raged by her fiance, yet she still clings to the notion that she loves him. This was very exasperating to read about. Both characters were being strange and stubborn. It was like they were both looking at their lives through a screne door. They could see part of it, but most of it was shady. But, towards the second half of the book, the door opened, and _The Awakening_ became wonderful. Amanda became more of a real character, and Hank acted with much more compassion then he origionally showed. His way of courting Amanda was knee weakening. Jude Deveraux has a gift with words. She makes all of her books come alive! I loved the time change. I've never really encountered books that took place in the early nineteen hundreds, and it works really well. The setting of a California hop ranch was delightful, and Jude Deveraux's research efforts shine as this book is rich with detail about the hop riots that happened around that time. I enjoyed reading about the trails of the workers, however, it was very heartbreaking. Jude Deveraux captured the essence of the hop fields, and her book made me want to research it more. Although _The Awakening_ started strangly and it was rather annoying in the begining, grit your teeth and get past the first couple chapters. From then on, the story picks up steam, and you will get involved in the characters' plots and lives. This book is definitely worth your time. I'd recomend it to anyone.

It was really interesting that this was based on a true story. It was based on the Wheatland Hop Riot of 1913.

Jude Deveraux is one of my favorite authors. This is one of her earlier books. I enjoyed it very much.

Amanda is being controlled by her husband to be. She meets Hank Montgomery and he helps her to see outside her home.

Her father is a tyrant farmer. He treats his farmworkers horribly.

If you like Jude's books you will enjoy this one.

This is my very first Jude Deveraux book and oh wow, it totally bowled me over!! The characters, Hank and Amanda really added spice to the whole story and i really, really loved the passion and romance between the two of them! And i loved the book n plot so much i've read it 5 times or more. A 100% great read.

The Awakening is my second-favorite Jude Devereaux novel (after The Princess). Smart, touching and very funny characters in a quasi-`The Taming of the Shrew' story. But Amanda Caulden is no shrew, just impossibly isolated and ignorant of the outside world. Leave it to a Montgomery man to shake up her world and wake her up. Great Reading.

Amanda Caulden has lived a sheltered and privileged life on the hop ranch belonging to her father. At 14 a tutor, Taylor Driscoll was brought in by her father to educate her and to tame her. Now at 22, Taylor has become her fiance and he rules her World with an iron rod. He sets her schedule for each day and she must adhere to the schedule which even includes how many minutes she can spend in the bathroom, what she must eat and what she must wear. She knows no different other than her orderly life and until the arrival of Dr Hank Montgmoery, an economics professor and union organizer.

Hank Montgmomery has been requested by the government to surveille the conditons of the workers of Caulden Ranch. Prior to the hop picking season, Hank is invited by Amanda's father to stay on their ranch and Amanda is allocated the task to keep him entertained by going to museums and lectures. Hank is not the stuffy professor that Amanda expected but a handsome young man that likes fast cars, women and the good life but he is also concerned about the welfare of the poor workers who have a tough life. Slowly Hank awakens Amanda to a life of other than books and lectures. He takes her dancing, to restaurants, moonlight trysts and the movie theatre. Later he also opens her eyes up to the plight of the poor migrant workers. They both fall for each other but can Hank persuade Amanda away from her safe orderly life in the arms of her cold tutor and fiance, Taylor?

This was such a wonderful book. Hank was so charming and such a gentleman, as with many of Jude Deveraux's heros. It was funny to read Amanda keeping to her strict schedule and then breaking free from it. The love story was beautiful as you could see both protagonists trying hard not to fall for each other but they cannot prevent the inevitable. A thoroughly good read indeed. I'll have to search for more Jude Deveraux books I have yet to read.

Lealing

This book had everything you need to create a good romance: a dashing hero, a beautiful heroine, a person who always seems to interfere with the hero and heroine, and, most of all...PASSION!

I love Jude Devereax and have read almost every one of herbooks, but this has to be my 2nd favorite (the 1st is of course AKnight in Shining Armor). Why can't there be real men like the Montgomery's? This book is so full of passion and intrigue I refused to put it down.

The year is 1913. Amanda Caulden lives a rather sheltered life in her father's lucrative California ranch. She lives under the very strict orders of her fiance and tutor, Taylor Driscoll, who plans her lessons as well as her every movement, and that includes toilet breaks. Amanda is content with this though. She loves Taylor and she wants to please him in everything. But things change when Dr. Henry "Hank" Montgomery, a college professor and labor unionist, comes into her home to spend time with her greedy father and check his operations while planning a peaceful union that would help get the miners a pay raise. Hank is a serious professor and cares about his students, but he is a race car driver and a hopeless womanizer with a penchant for food and motion pictures during his spare time. And he's the proverbial do-gooder. He especially likes damsels in distress who are either married or engaged to horrible men and he "saves" them from a bad relationship. Which is what he does as soon as he sees through Amanda's prim and proper behavior and human encyclopedia ways and meets her controlling fiance. But does she want to be saved? And will she allow him to intervene with her father's operations at the ranch? Does she even know what happens from right under her nose? There are many twists throughout the novel.

Once again, I have read a Jude Deveraux novel that was as riveting as it was romantic and insightful. This is one of her best works I've read. I thought the subplot of greedy landowners, oppressed and underpaid miners and union organizations was very well written. I enjoyed the author's fictional account of a real-life college professor and unionist and of the Wheatland Hop Riot, a real-life tragedy that occurred in California in 1913, which Deveraux wrote about in her afterword. The way those miners were treated was horrible and disgusting. Deveraux decided to be accurate in that account and she was very insightful. The overall historical backdrop is wonderful. This is an Edwardian novel through and through, complete with the descriptions of the wardrobe, the women's movement, first motion pictures and chic motorcars. But the best part of The Awakening is the romance. This is one of the most romantic Deveraux novels I have read. Hank is such a hottie and oh so sweet! It is so great to read about a hero whose feelings for the heroine are so intense that he'd do anything for her. He calls Amanda his "Sleeping Beauty," and that she is, for she is a repressed woman with a wild spirit lurking somewhere inside of her. Yes, it sounds kind of corny, but it's nevertheless wonderful. Her change is slow and realistic, no abrupt changes here! She is somewhat annoying and far too naive at times though and I thought that Taylor's control over her was over the top at times, but not completely unbelievable given the time period. I couldn't believe this was the same Amanda from The Princess (which centers on J.T., Amanda and Hank's son), but then again this explains why J.T. thinks his mother is perfect in the aforementioned novel. What I also find interesting is that The Princess was written and published before The Awakening. So this is an interesting spin-off/prequel of The Princess. There is a line in the last chapter of this novel that made me laugh, a reference to The Princess, but I won't spoil things for the reader. Anyway, you won't want to miss this gem!