9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Bad... really bad... wow... just bad, March 26, 2006
I was asked to review this and got pretty psyched, since Amanda Ashley has been recommended to me often.
Wow. I hope this was just one bad book. Otherwise there is no hope for the reading public. THIS WAS AWFUL.
It began with repeated phrases (three and four times in the same number of paragraphs). The overall stench just worsened with every predictable and trite description. What's worse-- the trite descriptions were of southern rural life rather than midwestern, as were the bad snippets of dialogue.
Did anyone bother to edit this? Our female protagonist puts a pot of coffee on the stove, gets her newspaper, comes back and pours a cup? Either she found the worlds fastest antique percolator or lives in a 150 room mansion and the walk was REALLY long. And... pink beehives?
Ugh. Trite. Pedantic. Rote. Horrible.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Extremely Boring, July 31, 2006
I've read Amanda Ashley in the past, and don't remember any of her books being this boring or frustrating.
First, the heroine is TSL (too stupid to live). For example, Vicki comes across info that casts suspicion on Antonio as a serial killer. At this point, she's done nothing more than serve him coffee. They have no relationship. He does not enthrall her with his vampire powers. They are strangers. Does she immediately go to the police? No, she lets him WALK HER HOME. Not only that, she's so scared there's a serial killer on the loose, she INVITES this stranger into her home while she goes upstairs to "look around." Yes, that was just one of many instances where I had to do a doubletake while reading.
Second, there's repetitive "non action." The evil villain appears at Vicki's home, Vicki screams, Antonio or vampire hunter Tom (whose secondary story is awfully forced) give chase, the villain gets away. Wash, rinse, repeat. At some point you wonder, "Is this going anywhere?"
Which brings me to the third problem: our hero, Antonio is pretty much useless. And the way the villain is finally brought down---well, let's just say after 300+ pages of non action, I expected it to take more than ONE page to defeat the villain.
Finally, there is very little romance, sensuality or sexuality in this book. With about 60 pages to go I actually stopped and thought, "Wait a minute, are these 2 even TOGETHER?" Seriously. It struck me all of a sudden that they had yet to really express any deep feelings for each other, physically or emotionally. The romance did pick up a bit with about 20 pages to go but by that time, I was just ready to finish the book and be done with it.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
good but not the best, March 9, 2006
This is the second book of Ms. Ashley's I have read, and once again I was disappointed. It was a good story, had a promising plotline, but it fell flat on several levels. For one, I agree with the reviewer that called this particular story rather "country", and that really bothered me more than I thought it was going to as it threw the story a bit off. Secondly, the heroine of the story was underdeveloped in certain areas and overdeveloped in others; more importantly, she was downright annoying, especially with her excessive cleaning. Thirdly, while the confounding positions the author seems to enjoy putting her characters in were sometimes the right moves to make, more often than not they seemed to done for the wrong reasons or involved elements of a juxtaposition that just didn't make any sense, leading to results and consequences that were a bit of a stretch for what had previously transpired. Overall, I just wasn't impressed with the finished product.
so would I recommend this book? Eh. I'll leave that up to you to decide.
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