Customer Reviews

The Burning Point

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

If this is the first review of the book that you have read, and you are a MJP fan, STOP READING NOW, buy the book and judge for yourself. You may love it, you may hate it, but it will better to just read it and decide for yourself.

It is impossible to review this book without a "spoiler," so if you are still reading, be warned. Well into the story, the reader discovers that the secret in Kate and Donovan's past was that he was physically abusive to her during their marriage.

Now, it is impossible to deal with this issue without controversy, and to have it show up in a romance novel plot is a bit shocking. But I gave this book 5 starts because it dares to raise this issue. Abusive heros are not uncommon in romances - in fact during the early days of romance they seemed the norm - but having a clear contemporary wife-batterer show up as the protagonist makes the issue explicit.

At the heart of these stories is whether the flawed hero can reform. Traditionally, it is the love of the heroine that reforms the hero, which I think is a dangerous message. In this book, though, it is clear that love is not enough. Kate has to leave and Donovan has to face himself before he can change his ways. And he has to do it the hard way, by himself, with no expectation that Kate will ever return. In the end they do get back together (it is a romance, after all), but Donovan's changes are in spite of Kate, not because of her. In the end, I think this is a more positive message than most romances send.

I do agree with the reviewer who wished that Donovan's reform was more explicit - I wished the story had SHOWED his hard work rather than told about it. But I do think that the book did show Kate doing a good job of setting her own boundaries, and is worth the read.

I love Mary Jo Putney's historicals, and was very much looking forward to her first contemporary. However, when I picked up the book for the first time and began reading it, I was shocked to discover that the subject was a reconciliation of a marriage that had ended due to abuse. Honestly, I thought she was nuts - how could that be remotely acceptable? But the story is well-written, as always, and I felt driven to see how the situation was handled. To my surprise, I thought that the issue of abuse was incredibly well-done. I actually felt like I learned quite a bit about the topic by "listening" to Kate and Donovan's discussions and thoughts, and "watching" them learn to deal with each other and themselves. I thought that Ms. Putney made it abundantly clear that Kate had needed to leave the abusive situation entirely for either of them to change or learn from the experience - this book in no way encouraged women to stay with an abusive spouse. Admittedly, a reconciliation in this situation is unlikely, but I don't think it is any more so than many of the plots in other romance novels. And while this may be an unusual forum for addressing domestic abuse, I think the author did an excellent job of showing all sides of the issue. Thank you, Ms. Putney, for a compelling read.

Before reading this understand that i am a die hard fan of Ms. Putney's and have enjoyed many of her books. I have never questioned her writing talent and I eagerly looked forward to her contemporary debut. 100 or so pages into the book i want to scream. I would have given my right eyetooth for Ms. Putney to have picked any other subject than domestic violence or spousal abuse to be the conflict between the hero and heroine. I have finished the book and have even read this one twice to be fair, but my feelings about this book have not changed.

Katie and Donavan divorced ten years ago. Katie moved away from family and friends to start a new life with no reason as to why to anyone. Patrick "Donavan", her ex husband stayed and continued to work for her father Sam. Sam own and operates a building demolition business. When Sam is killed in an explosion, Katie has to return home for the funeral. During the reading of the will, Katie finds out that her father has never really given up on her and Donavan and in order for her, her brother, and Donavan to inherit, she must live with Donavan for at least one year after Sam's death. Katie complies and they discover that Sam was murdered, not accidentally killed and someone is out to destroy the business.

What follows is described by some as a story of suffering and redemption. What follows is suppose to show love conquers all and forgiveness goes a long way. What follows is suppose to show that as long as you love each other you can overcome.

What is suppose to happen just does not happen for me. The minute the conflict was revealed between the two main characters this book ceased being a romance for me. When it was revealed all i could think about was simply this: no love, no money, nothing should have justified Katie going back into this situation, especially as blindly as she did. This was simply too unbelievable to me and sends a terrible message to the 100000 women out there.

What also didn't work was Donavan's character. I know this is fiction and fiction is suppose to mimic our hopes and dreams. It would be wonderful if men who abuse women would immediately realize that they had a problem when they lose the women they "love". That Donavan did this was totally unbelievable and by shaping his character in such a way, Ms. Putney went a long way in reinforcing the myth's surrounding domestic violence and spousal abuse.

When i finished this book, i desperately read the authors notes to try to find out why Ms. Putney approached this subject so carelessly, so unresearched, so flippantly. I was disappointed.

To her credit Ms. Putneys states that domestic violence is never right, it is wrong. And to her credit, having Katie leave when she realized that her husband was an abuser was right and brave. Having Katie agreeing to go blindly back into this situation reinforces the "give him a second change syndrome". And the main problem with this book was the hero. Ms. Putney's author notes describe him as not a bad man, just someone who was abused himself as a child. She further describes him as having lost the love of his life, Donavan had to come to some hard realizations and take control and come to terms with his problem. Ms. Putney went a long way in trying to sympathize this character and in doing so also went a long way in reinforcing many of the myths surrounding domestic violence.

myth: domestic violence is about loss of control. fact: domestic violence is about control as its most fearsome, and about using fear and physical abuse to control the victim.

I would have respected Ms. Putney more if she had research her subject matter and that it had reflected more responsibly in her book. I do not think anyone exposed to any type of domestic violence situation or anyone that has any knowledge of DV would be able to enjoy this book. This is one subject that should never be romanticized or sympathized in a contemporary setting.

I was disappointed in this book and quite frankly disgusted with the lack of empathy and responsbility this author has shown toward those brave women that have chosen to renew their lives by getting away from these situations. She went a long way toward possibly making them feel guilty for doing so or reinforcing them to stay in such situations.

Ms. Putney is a wonderful author, how could she have been so misguided on this one? I would ask her one question. Is this the kind of message she you wishes to send the 2 out 10 women who will read her book that are currently in DV situations?

I'm a fan of Mary Jo Putney for her wonderful Regency-period novels, but I've also read her one mediaeval and loved it, so decided to give this one a chance despite the mixed reviews here. And I'm very glad I did. Putney has certainly not lost her talent for taking a seeming impossible relationship and bringing the couple back together. Here, along with forgiveness and understanding, goes redemption.

I liked Putney's way of introducing us to her two main characters. We meet Kate and Donovan when they've been divorced for ten years, but are not told what caused the break-up of their marriage. Instead, we get to meet them both and get to know them a little first. And Donovan seems to be a nice guy, considerate, understanding, regretful over the way he treated Kate. By letting her readers get to know Donovan in this way, Putney not only lets us get to know him without preconceptions and, as a result, come to like him; it means that when we do find out what happened in Kate and Donovan's marriage, the shock is all the greater.

Domestic violence is unacceptable. I have no intention of getting into the debate which has raged in these reviews about whether it is or is not a forgiveable offence. Putney herself acknowledges that it is a highly controversial theme to include in a romance. However, I did accept by the end of the book that she had shown Donovan as not only genuinely sorry for what he'd done, but also as someone who had overcome his violent impulses. He'd worked out why he was violent (violent, controlling father, the influence of alcohol), and had undergone counselling and treatment. He had unlearned the habit of violence. I was totally convinced of that. And so I was totally convinced that Kate was right to come to love him again.

What spoilt the book somewhat for me, though, was the dramatic/action/mystery plot. It took over too much for my liking: I prefer my romances to focus on the individuals. I understand that Putney was using the demolition industry as a metaphor for the characters' relationships, but that's not really what I want from a novel, and for me it overshadowed the *real* story. There were also a few too many secondary characters; I might wonder whether Putney is considering writing about some of Kate's friends, except that I hoped for similar follow-ups to Uncommon Vows and it didn't happen. I suspect Putney likes to try out different genres as experimentation, whether or not she intends to continue writing in those genres, but still finds it hard to resist introducing a whole cast of secondary characters just in case she might want to make use of them some day. (That said, I did like the secondary romance in this book).

So, while I enjoyed this book and will definitely keep it, it won't be re-read with the same enjoyment or frequency as M-J P's historical novels.

I've read the book and I've read the reviews by Sandra Creelman and Jo Manning. Each lady made wonderful points in their reviews. However, I have to side with Ms. Manning.

The Burning Point is a comtemporary romance, not a novel on the state of society. It is a love story between two people who shared a secret, divorced, then found their way back together again. Does it happen in real life? I'm sure it does at times. Spousal abuse is a difficult subject to deal with in any form. If I had picked this book up as an autobiography or biography, I probably would have thought the main character Kate was nuts for going back into her situation. But this is not a true story, I know when I picked up a comtemporary romance, the main idea is for the hero and heroine to live happy ever after.

I'm not going to review the story, its been done by every other reviewer. I am going to put my two cents on this aspect of the story. I really think the book would have been better if the past has been told first. I had a hard time seeing Donovan as the man he is now, being the abuser he was when he was younger. It just didn't jive for me. Also, Kate's father was a control freak who couldn't accept aspects of his family life. He sounds just as much as an abuser as Donovan--maybe not physical, but as an emotional abuser.

Some will like this book, many will not. Read it at your own discretion but don't turn it down just because of the subject matter.

Do you like Mary Jo Putney's historical novels? Then you are in for a treat. Do you prefer contemporary or women's fiction? Then you are in for a treat. Ms. Putney is known for writing characters with depth and complexity, characters with very real issues, flaws, and problems to overcome, such as alcoholism or degenerative illness. In The Burning Point, she blends this talent with a contemporary setting, a fascinating current technology, and modern problem-solving techniques to create a riveting, emotionally satisfying read.

In The Burning Point, a woman comes to grips with an intense, abusive relationship and helps mend a family fractured by death and divisiveness. But Ms. Putney never gives us cardboard characters, either all good or all bad. Each character must face their weaknesses and find the inner strength to overcome them. This process is fascinating; you feel, understand and empathize with their desire to 'do the right thing' and also to grow and fulfill their potential as completely as possible. For example, rather than present the abuser as a cliched villian, Ms. Putney brings us inside him, to see (in flashbacks) his horror during his growing realization of his problem, his acceptance (including therapy, support groups, and radical lifestyle changes) and his continuing struggles with feelings of guilt, self-disgust, and hopelessness.

Seeing an issue from the inside out brings new possibilities and new insight. While this novel has romance, and a large extended family of characters, each character must privately accept and vanquish his or her own demons, finding their own path of truth and justice in a morally ambiguous world. In The Burning Point, abuse victims can see to their own healing, but they are never responsible for the redemption of the abuser. Can family rifts be healed, even after a decade of silence? Can an abuser recover, or is he or she a lost cause? Is there even room in the modern world for such notions as redemption and forgiveness? Ms. Putney gives us a hopeful 'yes', and I was left with a sense of satisfaction and promise, as well as a set of characters that I will not soon forget.

Kate Corsi's family business is explosive demolition. When her father dies in an explosion-gone-wrong, Kate returns home for the first time in a decade. There she's not only forced to confront demons from her past, but according to her father's will, she has to live with her biggest demon -- her ex-husband -- for the next year.

Patrick Donovan knows that the blame for his marriage to Kate falling apart a decade ago lies squarely on his shoulder. But though he's changed many things in his life there is one thing that's never changed -- his feelings for Kate. Because of her father's will he has a chance to prove to her that people can change for the better, and that their love is still there, just buried deep and waiting to be resurrected.

The Burning Point is a powerful story of a love that never died, and two people who are brave enough to reach into the recesses of their souls to find it. Mary Jo Putney proves her contemporary "voice" is every bit as strong as her historical "voice."

Ms. Putney is easily among the five best writers in the romancegenre. I have enjoyed several of her books tremendously.Unfortunately THE BURNING POINT, her first contemporary, left me curiously indifferent.

When I found out from other reviews here what the topic was (some of the other reviews contain SPOILERS), I was skeptical yet willing to be persuaded. I applaud Putney for taking such a risk, and while I'm leery of this subject, I have liked her morally dark characters in her historicals, so I wanted to give this book a chance.

I expected to either love this book or find it upsetting. What I didn't expect was that I would feel neither, but instead remain unmoved and uninvolved. I expected THE BURNING POINT to among her most emotional books, but instead I found it kind of dry.

THE BIGGEST PROBLEM with the book for me was that Putney almost never showed what was going on inside Donovan when he was at his worst. In the others of her books, when the heroes wrong the heroines we see what those men are feeling and thinking. This makes it easier to believe in these dark heroes' transformation later.

Without experiencing Donovan's dark side from his point of view WHILE the painful moments were taking place, it was hard to understand the demons that drove him. Without understanding them it was hard to know what to believe about him. Yes, there were intellectual explanations given. We were TOLD about what was going on AFTER THE FACT, but we were never SHOWN what was going on inside him DURING THESE EVENTS. Therefore he seemed like a completely different character at those times; a Jekyll & Hyde.

Since I never experienced his dark side internally, I could not really experience his redemption either. Without experiencing it, it was hard to care about it. I needed to be shown the moment when he realized what he'd really done and the anguish he felt when he finally "got it"...There were also problems with the heroine. Kate was not particulaly interesting to me. If her emotional pain had been shown to me early on, I would have cared more about her. Instead, she seemed cold and distant, someone I couldn't penetrate. She actually called her mother "Julia" and her father "Sam" -- even when she was a teenager.

Donovan felt like the more human of the two, which was surprising. I could believe in his feelings for Kate more than in Kate's feelings for him. Since Kate was the one who had to take the biggest risk and make the leap of faith, seeing her love for him was crucial. Instead, it almost seemed like she chose to go back because he was a "good catch" rather than becaue of personal feelings for HIM.

I felt that the reasons why Donovan and Kate were thrown together weren't compelling enough that they would agree to it...As for the mystery, I GUESSED THE IDENTITY OF THE VILLAIN ON P.84, and I agree with the reviewer below who said the villain was unnecessary to the story. Also, I am part Italian and I thought that the conversation about the marinara sauce in one scene rang false, like well-meaning ethnic tokenism that unintentionally caricatured Italian-Americans.

So, what was the good part of this book? I liked the secondary romance between the heroine's widowed mother and her lifelong friend. I liked the heroine's brother up until the end (when his decision made me wonder if the author was uncomfortable with this character). A couple of the heroines friends had potential, and the demolition and architecture background was interesting. Plus, even with all its flaws, this book was more intelligent than 95% of the romances out there on the market.

I think that perhaps the author bit off more than she could chew by introducing so many characters, jumping back and forth in time so much, tackling such an issue, and writing in a modern setting for the first time. I'm not sure, but maybe it would have worked better to have the middle section of the book be one long flashback to the failed marriage instead of scattering the flashbacks througout. For all the reasons above, this book felt uneven and all-over-the-place.

I wonder if the author shied away from the characters' emotions because of the incendiary premise. She might have pulled her premise off better if she'd let the reader get closer to characters and shown what they were feeling in the crucial moments.

Nevertheless, I admire her gutsiness and her risk-taking. If you are a romance reader who hasn't read Putney before, you should not wait another day to start, but I would start with SHATTERED RAINBOWS. Putney's formal writing style is much more well-suited to historical romances but her fans might still want to give THE BURNING POINT a try so they can judge for themselves.

I won't rehash the whole story line here. I am, however, dismayed that so many reviewers (spoilers in this case) gave the story away so blatantly that leaves one wondering if you should bother to read the book at all. Being a huge fan of Mary Jo Putney, I never miss any of her work but I was quite disappointed with this effort.

It seems that MJP tried to cram too may issues into this story. I applaud her for tackling another difficult issue but in my point of view, the domestic violence angle was not sufficiently handled in this book. Given the explosive premise of this book, I had very high expectations that it would lead to a very earth-shattering climax but I was left feeling very flat instead.

I feel that Donovan's rehabilitation process should have been shown instead of just being told about it. Also, Kate is not the usual strong Putney heroine that I have come to expect. She seems a little too hesitant. I would expect her to deal with her husband head-on if she really had come from a supportive family, discounting the fact of her control freak Dad.

Some of the cliches and lines were so corny as to be trite! Example, Charles said:"I invited both dogs ontp the bed to help me make it through the nights". We just had to be told how emotionally distraught he was. Furthermore, Kate and Donovan had to name their cat "Dynamite", to gel him with their family business, you know? And what is a contemporary novel without some Hollywood tinsel in the form of girlfriend Raine Marlowe.

If you expect a hot read, this one's not for you. The sensuality factor in this story is way too low compared with MJP's other works. Perhaps it's because of too much (and serious) subject matter it did not leave much room for that. However, the parallel romance of Kate's mom and family friend was a treat. I hope MJP would follow up the "Circle of Friends" theme and give us better work in the future.

As a long-time reader and fan of the intensity and intelligence of MJP, I picked this one up with confidence. Unlike many other reviewers, I don't consider this book an attempt to explain or or justify either domestic violence or its treatment. This was a story, and the plot twists are done in the author's usual style. I did find myself to be more sympathetic with the hero for a long time, than the heroine, who seemed out of step with the emotional growth the man proclaimed to have acheived. Nontheless:

What interested me more was the change of time frame for the author. Her historical novels are some of the most lush and intense I have read, and are re-read favorites of mine. I found I missed the richness of the historical venue. I read to relax, and enjoy the scenes drawn by an artist with words. This modern setting lacked color and texture. Room service just can't match a meal of many courses served by a persnickety butler. Or a modern house, newly designed and built, does not have the feel of an old country family home full of history. And airplanes just don't compare to a fancy team of horses, a great saddle horse, or the time spent getting from place to place by carriage, with all its possibilities. Where can we find such riches of touch and flavor in modern life?

I admire Ms. Putney for wanting to broaden her horizons, but I hope we haven't seen the last of her historical mastery. I greatly admire her characters for their depth, and her ability to write about hearts and minds with such insight and creativity.