Customer Reviews

Bulls Island CD

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I'm not a 'professional reviewer', I'm just a very avid reader, so please keep this in mind when you read this review.

A very brief summary of this book - The main characters of this book are "Betts" McGee and J D Langley who, when we meet them 19 years ago are very young and very much in love. Through a tragic event on the day they become engaged, they seperate, Betts leaves South Carolina and breaks off from her family and JD. Moving forward 19 years and the true story starts.
This book is filled with a variety of emotional upheavals - I laughed through many chapters and cried through the same number, but the one thing you can't get around is everyone in this novel carries some kind of secret. Secrets and lies - this is the glue that seems to hold these two families together for bettter or worse. Ms. Franks writes with a vividness and Southern style that makes you want to be sitting on your front porch sippin' at a Mint Julep while you watch the 'gators slowly swim by in the murky river.

JD and Betts are thrown together again after 19 years when Betts, now a high-powered New Yorker, whose job it is to evaluate and restructure distressed properties for her company, finds herself forced to work on a project back home in South Carolina with Langley Developement , AND J D Langley on the Bulls Island project. Secrets and lies, and Betts seems to be hiding the bigggest secret and telling the largest lies.

I was more than half-way through this book, before Ms Frank started to make me worry that the secrets will remain untold and the lies would remain un-apologized for...more chapters went by and I started to gnaw at my finger-nails thinking she could never pull this off. Just when i thought I couldn't stand another moment of suspence it happened...Betts secret is out. I read the last chapters with much skepticism thinking that the ending was just too pat, too easy...too false. But thank God for the epilogue. It sealed the deal in making this a perfect beach -read and for making me go to the bookstore to pick up all Ms.
Franks books to add to my collection.

On a side note - In the first quarter of the book, Betts does have a bit of a fling with someone so totally out of her comfort zone, that I had to wonder why Ms. Franks bothered. But, the pieces seem to fall together in the last chapters and I see why she had Betts do
something so out of character!

I also wanted to let you know that I was so impressed and amused and happy with this book, that I immediately went out and bought 3 more by this author.

Just when you thought you couldn't go another minute without a Dot Frank novel, she gifts her readers with the perfect beach book. The charm of the Carolina low country is facing a crisis, and our native-born heroine, now residing in New York City, returns home to deal with the new venture, estranged family, and the former fiancé she never forgot.

Betts McGee hasn't been home in twenty years. A tragic event and a dark secret sent her away, but when her successful career sets her on the path home, Betts must face a past she not only longs for but also fears to face.

Told in the intimate first-person style by Betts and occasionally by former fiancé J.D. Langley, the story moves toward the expected conclusion with a few tiny twists along the way. The problem is that Betts is not an entirely sympathetic character mainly because we see her as a highly successful career woman dining at New York's finest (Per Se, Grammercy Tavern, etc.) and living in a posh condo with numerous amenities. We don't see but rather hear in retrospect, the way those lost twenty years played out, the struggles she must have had and the torments that must have plagued her guilty conscience. So, Betts is not an easy person to sympathize with, though I'm sure a fuller picture of her would have corrected this if only the author had given us a more intimate look at her immediately after the events that threw her world into chaos. By skipping ahead twenty years, we get a successful woman who once upon a time had a problem. Of course, the "problem" reappears and must be dealt with. Again, Betts gets off rather lightly and the negative feelings towards her are pretty much skipped over until all is calm and she is reassured she is forgiven for her youthful errors in judgement.

That aside, the book is still well worth reading, as are all books by Dot Frank. However, I guess I was expecting a more tear-jerking saga about this particular problem that has been the source of so many heart-wrenching movies from the 40's and 50's. Dot Frank chose to keep it light and not make you cry in your pina colada while chilling on the beach....and maybe she had the right idea.

With a great plot one would expect the author to conjure up characters the reader might care about. Sadly, this "lowcountry" novel falls way short of the Pat Conroy tradition.

Perhaps it is the protagonist's voice that doesn't ring true or maybe it is the bizarre phonetic southern drawl pasted on some of the characters, but this really isn't a very good book.

I'm so glad I didn't buy this book. I have really enjoyed DFB's books in the past. Betts is the snarky main character and throughly dislikable. Maybe every author only has X number of books to write. This was a huge disappointment.

This book is about an island that is truly a national as well as a state treasure. It seems a travesty to even write a fictional account about destroying it. This author does know first hand the Charleston area but fails to demonstrate that in this book. This bok is not worthy of the author of Plantation which was wonderful and I hope it is made into a beautiful full lenghth movie.

As always, I continue to be Dottie's fan & wait for her next book as a child might wait for Christmas. Bulls Island is a decent read. I appreciated how the author spun ecology into some of the chapters. But... I could never get sympathetic with the main character, Betts McGee. I guess being from the South, it is hard for me to understand how true Southern women pick up a strange man at a bar for sport (exactly!). To make matters worse, Betts always had everything her self-righteous heart desired in the way of designer this & that. My impression of Betts? Snob Slut. The story was a bit too simple: it didn't take many pages to guess the father of her son. However, I wait for the next book... hopefully it will have more Southern flavor.

Like a lot of the reviewers in here, I just love DBF's earlier books, Sullivan's Island and Plantation. I love reading about the Deep South, probably because I've only visited that area a few times in my life and it is different from the northwest corner of Ohio, where I live. I have read others of her books and it was with great eagerness that I requested this book from the library.

Somehow, it's not the same as her others. It feels shallower and has less character development and depth. It is a very fast-paced book but I didn't feel drawn to the love story of JD Langley and Betts McGee. The really annoying sister? Not all that annoying (believe me, the Southerners do not have the only grip on weird family tales). The mother-in-law from heck? Well, she really isn't all that fierce. I think what really annoys me is the lack of spine that every single one of the characters in this book has. The only real characters that I really enjoyed are Adrian, Betts' son and Sandi, Betts' assistant.

This story focuses on Betts who ran away from Charleston, SC, to NYC after her mother's death, leaving behind JD with a broken heart. After twenty years, Betts is called back to the south because of her company who is investing in real estate on Bulls Island, with JD's family company. Dreading the return to the south, Betts cover up her broken heart with a sarcastic sense of humor. Betts also returned home with a deep secret that is bound to be found out, just not in ways that she expected. When she sees JD again, their chemistry sizzles and flares up again, and they realize that their love for one another is as strong as it was two decades ago.

I am a bit disappointed because I have come to expect more from her writings. However, since it kept my attention throughout this busy weekend, it isn't all that bad. She can still tell a story. Not every story has to be as stellar as her first ones, and she is still one of my favorite authors. In fact, her book, The Land of the Mango Sunsets, is on my short tbr list. Just because I didn't care for this book as much as I enjoyed her others, it doesn't mean that someone else wouldn't enjoy it. However, if you're really interested in reading what she can write, please, I encourage you to read Sullivan's Island and Plantation. Those two books are on my bookcases permentantly. I will always love her for those two!

This novel is great for that dreary plane flight or for a quick read while lounging at the pool. I can guarantee that it is a fast read.

6/15/08

I really enjoyed this book. I'm from Charleston, SC and always feel such kinship with all the female characters from DBK books. She does such a wonderful job of describing the Charleston scenery and the details that she provides are so accurate. I wish I could write that way. I read this book in about two days and couldn't put it down. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking for great summer read.

I've read and enjoyed several other books by DBF. So I was looking forward to reading this and was so disappointed. it's totally poorly written and just a total phone in on the part of this author. thumbs down.

Evidently Dorothea Frank has decided that any book she writes is most likely going to sell well anyway so why bother with character development or any of the bothersome things that are necessary to make a good read. She mentions in all of her books that she is friends with Pat Conroy (one of the most wonderful writers that has ever lived), but unfortunately name dropping does not a writer make. The most glaring fault in this book is having an intelligent, successful, devoted mother participate in a series of one night stands with a thick-as-a-plank gigolo that she suspects is connected with the Mafia. Mrs. Frank evidently wants everyone to know that even though she was born and raised in the south, she is now a sophisticated New Yorker. Maybe if I had gotten this book from the library I would not be so upset, but I actually paid money for this book!