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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A solid effort from Baldwin, October 4, 2009
This review is from: Breaking the Ice (Paperback)
The other reviewers provide a synopsis of the novel, so I'll not bother.
A good book by Baldwin. It touches upon several events in her own life, and as a result, the book works rather well. So why not five stars? That annoying habit in soooo many lesbian fiction novels of wrapping up a 250+ page book in less than two pages! C'mon, folks. Please, can authors not have some say in their works and provide at least 5-10 pages for a proper resolution? Doing so makes for a better, more satisfying read. Authors, you put your blood, sweat, and tears in your books; are proper endings and resolutions lost in the editing process? I'm not picking on Ms. Baldwin, not at all. This is a trend I've noticed the last few years in lesbian fiction, and it bothers me. As a reader, I invest my time in a novel, and I want my investment to pay off. The payoff isn't so great when endings are lopped off and removed. I want the whole enchilada, and I don't mind paying for it. I don't like an enchilada that's short on ingredients. And now that I've mentioned food, I'll go grab a bite to eat. Perhaps an enchilada?? Who knows.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Romance and adventure, February 5, 2010
This review is from: Breaking the Ice (Paperback)
Karla Edwards suffers two staggering losses within a short time. First, her lover Abby walks out of what Karla thought was a satisfying relationship and then her mother dies suddenly in her sleep. The events leave Karla in a stupor wandering around her apartment in her pajamas unable to eat, bathe or communicate with the friends who are very worried about her. As she is going through her mother's belongings, she makes a startling discovery. Karla has a sister she never knew about. When she discovers that she lives in Alaska, Karla takes a leave of absence from her job as an ER nurse in Atlanta and heads north to meet the only family she has left.
Bryson Faulkner is a bush pilot in Alaska just like her father before her. She loves her isolated cabin, the surrounding wilderness and the excitement that her job brings her, but sometimes she does get lonely. The problem is she can't imagine herself living anywhere but where she is and she also can't imagine another woman being willing to settle for her kind of life. When she meets Karla, the sister of her best friend, that seems about to change, but Karla has a deeply wounded soul and finds it difficult to trust anyone. When Karla volunteers to stay with her sister to help her with the pending delivery of her baby, it gives her a chance to get to know Bryson and to fall in love with Alaska. What she has to decide is if she's willing to give up her job, friends and lifestyle in Atlanta for a harsh climate, wild creatures and a woman who might not come back sometime from a dangerous flight.
Kim Baldwin is skilled at taking a typical love story and turning it into something a little more. She writes realistic situations with interesting characters. That makes Breaking the Ice not just a romance, but also an adventure story. The descriptions of Alaska and the conditions there are vivid. The reader can feel the excitement of skimming over a glacier or the fear of wandering alone through a wilderness where the next thing around the bend might be a confrontation with a grizzly bear. The tone draws the reader into the story and the pace allows the characters to develop gradually, giving the reader a chance to feel she "knows" these people.
Breaking the Ice is a good book to spend a few hours with in an afternoon or evening when you want to be entertained.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A great read, December 6, 2009
This review is from: Breaking the Ice (Paperback)
I have always been a fan of Baldwin's writing, as it seems a cut above with many of the other Lez authors out there.
I really enjoyed this book, and the pace was just right, and the characters extremely likeable. I loved the fact that Baldwin
took the picture on the cover of the book as well. Although her book Hunter's Pursuit will always be my favorite, this
book is soon becoming my second favorite of hers, after the Elite Series. I would have rated this book a 4.5 if Amazon would
have had that as a option. I believe writers like Kim Baldwin, Tracey Richardson, Ronica Black and Ali Vali have set the
bar in Lez fiction, I think today's readers can be much more discriminatory and can demand more from the authors.
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