Customer Reviews

Every Breath She Takes

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Susan Forster has always been great at defining her characters, and this story shows no change. Rio and Carlie both have many problems to overcome, things stretching back to their childhoods, but do so. I hesitate to say they do so together, because for most of the book they spar around one another, not convinced that the other one isn't guilty. They have problems trusting, which for any good relationshiip is deadly. Rio is a mysterious character, who has a sixth sense, though refuses to call it pysychic. To him it is a learned 'power'...he just learned to listen better than others. Carlie comes from an extremely dysfunctional family though, on the outside they look perfectly normal.

I loved reading this story and breaking into the many layers Ms. Forster plots out for us. This story itself holds many twists and turns, and to be honset, I didn't know 'who dunnit' until the end. Its not often a book surprises me, but this one did. I do not know how accurate her psychological profile of stalker victims are, (since I have no pysch related education) but it seems very well presented. I felt that I was in the mind of the victim. My only criticism is that at times I thought the book was choppy or jumped around too quickly. Its not that I had a hard time keeping up with the story, but I would have liked some explinations or longer descriptions on what was happening. We would be one place which one character, then another place with another character, often times not knowing for a few paragraphs who we were with. I suppose that's one sort of literary license, but I didn't care for it. I also had a hard time defining fact from fantasy. Carlie has some fantasies and many of the scenes are written in such a style that I can't tell (until later) if what I am reading is happening to our heroine or is another of her fantasies. Overall though, this is a great contemp. suspence romance, and pick it up if you can!!!

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One of the more ambitious romantic suspense novels I've read in a while, EVERY BREATH SHE TAKES was undeniably suspenseful, but the romance was hard to buy. Rio and Carlie spend so much of this novel disliking and distrusting each other that their whiz-bang gee-I-love-you revelations at the end left me shaking my head. Rio is an appealing, if somewhat unbelievable, hero. Carlie has enough back story issues for two tortured heroines. They needed to spend a lot more time together on the page communicating calmly and rationally instead of hurling accusations at one another. That time should have come from the excessive amount of time allotted to secondary characters such as Danny and Jo Ellen (both of whom had enough issues to fill an entire novel). Forster starts with an interesting premise, but the execution could have been a lot smoother.

The first half or so of the book was engrossing, but somewhere mid book the heroine becomes TOO STUPID TO LIVE (TSTL). I felt the author deliberately manipulated things to the point where none of it was believable anymore. The ending was terrible.

SPOILERsss

How many murderers do you know stop in the middle to go to the bathroom. Even so why not just shoot the bastard when he comes out? And ummm, exactly why is the murderer trying to kill the heroine when he really didn't commit any murders to start with??

And why doesn't the heroine (personal safety expert) grab her handy dandy golf club under the bed? And why didn't she have even a clue what she was going to do with the bastard when she'd deliberately lured him? I mean going to a drive in alone, with no weapon to meet a stalker???? huh? And so on and so forth.

Breaking her own mold? I think so! I've read everything Forster has written (and that's a lot), but she has never reached this far in a story!

Rio (the hero) is a tight-lipped, dark, long-lashed, don't push me kind of guy with an incredible background that explains why he's that way...I just love this man!

Carlie is so focused...so into herself. No room for a man here. Until she meets Rio!

It's too easy to give you the plot and tell you what happens. But I won't do that!

Suzanne shines in this one!!

But once again Suzanne Forster has shown that she has so much potential. Her plot was a really good one, but I often felt lost and confused with where she is going with her plots. She leads breadcrumbs to the paths of nearly every character in the book, which isn't a bad thing, it just gets a little old as it seems everyone in the book has a "revelation" at the end. Like life can be solved in one quick week. I mean OK, so you're Mom doesn't like your profession and seems to not give a hoot about you in general; that is allowed to happen in real life. We don't necessarily need to know WHY that is. Most of us never know the deeper reasons why some things are the way they are.

She has a GREAT plot to start with but in this one it seems that she introduces too many characters as being more important than they really are, and for what? It ends up not being most of those people anyway and unless she plans a sequel, we really don't need to know that much about so many characters. I think if she had stuck with the begining and left out some of the personal takes and concentrated on staggering us all with a great begining and ending it would have been all the more satisfying.

I will continue to buy Suzanne's books but I will pass over her book to buy a J.D. Robb, Tami Hoag, or a Kay Hooper on my pay-day, to purchase theirs first.

Why, you might wonder, did I bother finishing this book if I thought it a stinker. I wanted to see who the bad guy was. IMO, it's a waste of time-what could possibly have been a decent plot was rendered ridiculous with its embarrassing dialogues and scenes, and the sheer stupidity of the heroine, Carlie.

S P O I L E R

For those of you who have started reading, are having trouble getting through it (took me a couple of months to read what I would have gotten through in not over 3 days had it been a good book), don't want to waste anymore time on it, but want to know "who done it":

S P O I L E R S P O I L E R S P O I L E R S P O I L E R
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Gabe, the reporter

In Suzanne Forster's, "Every Breath She Takes," the heroine is asked how she wants to be controlled, through love or fear. That choice is the essence of this dark, sensuous and high intensity novel. The heroine, Carlie Bishop, is the daughter of a wealthy and prominent family. Her older sister, Ginger, was the victim of a man who first stalked, then killed her, when Carlie was still in her teens.

As an adult, Carlie becomes a personal safety guru working toward raising awareness of just how dangerous a crime stalking is and running a support group for stalker victims, with the personal agenda of finding her sister's stalker/killer and bringing him to justice.

Her opposite number is Rio Walker, an LA Homicide cop with some unusual working methods. Walker had an affair with Ginger Bishop before her death, and Carlie remembers him from that time, as a dark and sinister presence.

The whole plot revolves around darkness - Rio trying to escape the darkness of his past but creating his own darkness in the present; Carlie being attracted yet repelled by the hints of darkness she finds in her sister's journals, afraid that she, too, is a prisoner of those urges.

Then there's the Femme Fatale. The book begins with the rather spectacular death of a stalker, as engineered by a killer the press has dubbed the Femme Fatale. It's Walker's job to find her and bring her to justice. Carlie Bishop is his number one suspect, her Superior Court Justice mother is number two. On the other hand, the more Carlie lears about Rio, the more she fears that he was her sister's killer.

The emotional tug of war between what Carly wants and what she fears, what Rio wants and what he fears, send them on a dizzyingly sensual chase that reveals the darkest parts of each of them. Add to the mix a stalking victim who's moved halfway across the country to escape her tormentor, only to find herself being terrorized and physically assaulted by a man who could be her stalker but could also be the man who stalked and killed Ginger Bishop.

The denouement is high tension, as the real stalker and the real Femme Fatale are unmasked in a shootout that risks all their lives. My only reservation is that Forster cheated in her compact with the reader by putting thoughts in the stalkers head early on that the stalker would not have had. It was a good enough puzzle without that. and without that I would have given it five stars, I think. With a background in Clinical Psychology, Forster can really peel away the pretenses we all hide behind and lay bare the human psyche.

The book had an interesting premise but it left a lot of things unfinished. We never find out what happened to Carlie in the brothel in Florida. The romantic relationships between Rio and Carlie, Danny and Jo were awkward. There is no one with a sane childhood. Also, there were too many coincidental relationships (family, lovers, coworkers, ex-somethings) between the characters to be believeable, a la Charles Dickens. SPOILER: DO NOT READ BEYOND THIS POINT IF YOU DON'T WANT A CLUE! The Femme Fatale and the main stalker turned out to be very minor characters; we don't know anything about them until after the climax. All we get is a little passage for each at the end to explain their motives! Arrg!

This is a good mystery. It was fun trying to figure out who was next to die. Who was killing the bad guys? Was it a woman who was stalked and attached herself? Or a man who is a vigilante? Or is it the duaghter of US Supreme court judge? It was fun to find out and watch the love grow between a hard nosed cop and saint of women.

This is one of my favorite books by the author. I really liked the chemistry between Rio and Carly, as well as the plot. I agree that there were some loosely added scenes with little later explanation, and some more character development for Rio would have been helpful to add to his sexy appeal. However, I really did enjoy the novel and I recommend it. Other good reads by Forster are Innocence and Blush.