Customer Reviews

Broad Reach

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After reading Wendy Bartlett's Broad Reach, a maritime page-turner if ever there was one, I can't pass a marina without a mixture of fascination and fear.

Risk-taking is one of its themes. We all know "nothing ventured, nothing gained," yet who has not embarked on an adventure with someone we thought we knew--camping in the wilds, for example--only to discover the friend has, ahem, a hidden side?

Besides having a gripping plot, Broad Reach introduces us to a single mother whose daughter has just left for college. I don't know about you, but I'm sick of luscious sex and shopping heroines who manage to found a Fortune 500 corporation in spare moments while raising six model children pre-equipped with British nannies. Sarah, who found raising one talented daughter quite enough, finds herself at a turning point: free to forge a new life--even a new relationship, should the right man appear--lechers need not apply. Friendship and love between two people seasoned by life and not infrequently suffering appeal to me more than youthful dalliance.
Does this make Broad Reach a women's only book? Emphatically not. If men are from Mars, Bartlett makes us understand Mars' point of view, a personable Brit who doesn't swoon over tofu and bean sprouts. A brisk swim holds more appeal than the sun salute. Like most of us, he carries a secret or two and the shrewdness to keep them secret.

The obvious sailing experience of the author is another of Broad Reach's strengths. The landlubber in me relished the hideously vivid storm scene though.

And did you realize that the phrase "aye, aye, sir" is very much alive? Or that it's standard practice on the high seas for a couple to sail in the nude?

I highly recommend this book. And defy anyone to guess its ending.

With Helen, her only child, off to college on the other side of the country, Sarah wonders about her life. She meets Robert, a handsome Englishman with a sailboat and the need for a partner to sail around the world with him.

Looking for new challenges, adventures and possible romance, Sarah decides to join him. What she doesn't know is that this perfect gentleman on land becomes a totally different person at sea. Sarah struggles to make a decision; stay and tough it out with this man who has become abusive both verbally and physically towards her or go back to San Francisco and start her life over.

The cover artwork commands your attention if you have ever dreamed of sailing. The strong line of the sails and the boat healed over draws you into the passionate world of sailing. The remaining artwork throughout the book gives you a feel of the cruising life.

The story is set on the high seas, and many of the descriptions make you feel like you are out there sailing along side Sarah and Robert. The trials of living in such confined quarters with no means of escape, the boredom of the aptly-named doldrums, the fear portrayed during the storms, the thrill of catching a fish for dinner and the awe of watching the sun set over the ocean make you want to read on.

While these things were appealing to me, others confused me.

The author's style of writing a paragraph about one subject and then suddenly changing direction in the last sentence with a random though that is passing through Sarah's mind threw me off balance on numerous occasions. Descriptions that went on forever, down to the smallest of details made the story drag and took away from the action. There were a few incidences where unbelievable things happened out of the blue. These left me struggling to get though the book.

If you want to experience sailing the oceans of the world and like prolific descriptions, then Broad Reach is for you.

Sarah, gentle, childlike and clearly somewhat naive, meets Robert, in a chance encounter at a dock on the San Francisco Bay. Robert seems to be a dream - handsome, witty, and well enough off to spend his life sailing about the world. Sarah, suffering from empty - nest syndrome (her only child has recently left for college)makes an impulsive decision to accept Robert's invitation to accompany him on the next leg of his "adventure" as his "first mate", a decision that she will soon regret.

Once Sarah and Robert are at sea, the handsome Brit becomes someone Sarah does not recognize. Expecting perhaps Johnny Depp or Orlando Bloom, Sarah instead finds herself at sea with a demented Ebenezer Scrooge. And an Ebenezer Scrooge who is financially dependent on a brother, Jake. Robert frequently writes home to his brother for money, and uses this correspondence to inflate his own accomplishments, while belittling both Sarah's and her predecessor's accomplishments. Bartlett uses Robert's "letter home" to reveal him as a self - centered, self - aggrandizing buffoon, who is perhaps being paid to stay away.

During the voyage, and during stops at various ports in the South Seas, Sarah is subjected to Robert's verbal abuse and inexplicable (and nasty) mood swings. Also, she has been finding alarming "clues" and messages from her predecessor in the "first mate" role, which makes the voyage even more frightening. Finally, in a brilliantly metaphoric act, Sarah literally sinks Robert's boat. She has found within herself the strength and courage to end the relationship, and does so in spectacular fashion.

Bartlett has a lovely sense of place. describing both Sarah's home ground (San Francisco Bay area) and the small island port towns in the South Seas with a feeling for both the beauty and the squalor. Her descriptions of sailing ring true, and the feeling of actually being on the sea is strong.

A good read for mystery fans, sailing fans, and women's fiction readers.

Author of How to Mediate Like a Pro: 42 Rules for Mediating Disputes and How to Negotiate Like a Pro: 41 Rules for Resolving Disputes

Broad Reach by Wendy Bartlett is an exciting novel and journey on many levels. It is the struggle of a woman with a man she hardly knows on a boat sailing around the world; it is the journey of a man and woman against the elements; and probably most important, it is the journey of a woman to find her own strength and independence.

Sarah, the heroine, takes an adventure of a lifetime by signing on as a Second Mate on Robert's sailboat, Swan Daze, even though she knows little about sailing. Sarah's daughter has just left for college and she feels a void and is ready for an adventure. She is easily swayed by the Englishman's sexy charms and good looks so she quits her job and gives up her apartment and is ready to leave on this around the world adventure.

When asked what the Second Mate does, Robert says,
"The Captain is the king, the god, and the final word. The Second Mate is more like the second in command, the cook a lot of the time, the cleaner, the shopper." She does not get the full implications of this definition until much later.

We soon find out that Robert has two personalities: his land personality and his sailing personality. On land he is charming, sexy and attentive. On the sea he is, brooding, rude and bullying. He insults her cooking, her sailing and her womanhood. We learn very soon that he feels women are inferior and that below his sexy charm lies a mysogonist. Sarah is reminded of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, but this has a different ending. Her attraction to him becomes fear and loathing.

This book is very well-written and there are many hints that something bad is going to happen. As the reader, we don't know when and we don't know how, but we are on pins and needles waiting for that showdown for we know it is coming. I am not going to tell the ending because I don't want to be a spoiler. There are showdowns, but they are different from what I expected.

This is also a sailing book. It is a man and woman working together against the elements. It is obviously written by an author who has done some sailing in the South Pacific. When Sarah got seasick, I got a little queasy myself. The descriptions of sailing the boat are a big part of the story. Bartlett explains the real aspects of sailing around the world. It can be brutal because of sleep deprivation as Robert and Sarah spell each other for their watch. The food is mostly from tins when out at sea and when one is angry, there is no place to hide so those feelings have to be bottled up. Sarah soon discovers that she wants to leave as soon as they reach land. Robert knows this and does what he can to prevent this from happening since it would leave him stranded. At times she fears for her life. She also finds a mysterious pouch that lets her know she is not the only woman who has been afraid of Robert.

Wendy Bartlett is a very talented writer. She won an award at the 2007 San Francisco Writers Conference, which allowed her to publish Broad Reach with iUniverse. She also did the wonderful illustration of the cover. I love the title. A Broad Reach is a point of sail where the boat is sailing away from the wind. And a broad,of course,is also a woman.

I loved this book and I recommend it to people who like books about mysteries, adventures, sailing, travel, romance, and women finding themselves. I look forward to more books from Wendy Bartlett.