Bronze [Hardcover]

Kit Reed (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 27, 2005

Jude Atkins travels to South Carolina to meet Peter Benedict, a wealthy and successful painter she met on the Internet, and who she thinks she loves. What should be a normal courtship becomes a twisted descent into a dark family legacy in which art threatens life. The Benedict family's secret and the dark ambitions of the beautiful, sinister sculptor Ava Benedict, Peter's mother, threaten to engulf Jude, Peter, and everything they hold dear.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The cost of being a slave to talent, fame or fortune provides the theme for this exceptional thriller from Reed, an expert at creating witty cautionary tales (Thinner Than Thou). Sinister secrets lurk at Wayward, a South Carolina plantation, whose "doomed inhabitants," the Benedicts, are "caught in a dark globe of family obsession, terrible and huge." More than a hundred years earlier, Beauchamp Benedict's famous sculpture, God and His Creation, mysteriously disappeared en route to the National Cathedral, and now a centennial celebration is in the works, masterminded by the leader of his descendants, the maniacal Ava Benedict. The Benedicts have continued to awe the world with their sculptures, which, alas, require blood sacrifice. Judith "Jude" Atkins, a lowly jewelry designer, may become a victim, along with 11-year-old Edgar Benedict, the little brother of Peter, a painter who wants to escape the family legacy and with whom Jude has fallen in love. Seductive pacing and Reed's trademark glittering prose make this a chilling, satisfying exploration of art for art's sake vs. life for life's sake.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Night Shade Books (December 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1597800082
• ISBN-13: 978-1597800082
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,944,684 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, January 8, 2008

By 

American Valkyrie (Reno, NV) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bronze (Paperback)

The cover held a lot of promise for this book, but I'm glad I checked it out from the library rather than spending money on it. The author began it with a very intriguing scene, which was gripping and left me wanting to know what had happened to Jimmy... but Jimmy was never visited again in the rest of novel save a few references to his name, and it never told what he was so ashamed of doing. Certain very important details changed... such as the name of the male protagonist's first love interest. Halfway through the book, she had a totally different name. The characters were poorly developed and unsympathetic, especially when they started hitting on stereotypes, such as the Native American girl. The idea of using human life to bring reality to the statues was unique and could have been built on, but the author didn't do it well enough to make the idea credible within the novel. And the ending was a complete letdown. I feel bad about giving the author a bad review, but some main elements of fiction were lacking or poorly done.