Finders Keepers [Mass Market Paperback]

Fern Michaels (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1999

Growing up in a magnificent Charleston home, Jessie Rowland wants for nothing. Her rich, indulgent father has filled her room with expensive toys, but her frantically over-protective mother keeps her from having friends and never lets her out of her sight. As she grows into adulthood, her family's stifling possessiveness feeds her feelings of loss and isolation and fuels terrible nightmares from which she wakes screaming, night after night. At nineteen, she makes her escape to Washington, D. C., where no one knows her and where, as assistant to a prominent Texas senator, she is soon swept into a whirlwind marriage to his handsome son. But as the Senator's career collapses in scandal, her marriage turns ugly and abusive, triggering again her strange dreams of lost happiness. Finders Keepers is Jessie's story - the story of a child stolen from a loving home . . .of a woman lost in a life that is not her own . . .of a family shattered by an unspeakable crime. Jessie must rip the veil of every illusion before she can reclaim her life, and journey through a maze of heartbreak before she can find her way back to the place she can truly call home.

--This text refers to the MP3 CD edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Jessie Roland always knew that her feelings for her parents--dislike and disgust for her mother, less than love for her father--were anything but what a child should feel, especially for the parents that had given her a privileged childhood filled with private schooling, lavish vacations, and any gift that her heart desired. But try as she might, something always kept her from truly loving the Rolands. Strange dreams of a yellow dog and a stroller hinted at the truth, but Jessie couldn't recall the fateful day when Thea and Barnes Roland had stolen her from her stroller, leaving her pet retriever Jelly to chase after their car for miles, only to return to Jessie's stunned parents without the golden-haired little girl. Now a woman, and armed with a sizeable trust fund, Jessie moves far away from her parents to start a new life in Washington, D.C., where a new job, new apartment, and a new man awaits her. Tanner Kingsley is handsome, charming, and hiding something. Jessie's involvement with him will lead to happiness, heartache, and the full realization of her hidden past--a past she must come to terms with before she can find true peace. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Michaels (The Vegas Trilogy) packs her pages with the iconography of the rich and miserable. Empty Georgia manses, loveless Texas ranches, deeds to Greek Islands and death-by-sports-car in France all help form the backdrop for the Jessie Roland saga. Adorable toddler Hannah Larson, only child of poor but decent Grace and Ben, is sitting in her stroller outside a Tennessee gas station when baby-starved Thea and Barnes Roland pull in for a cream soda. Thea snatches the child, Barnes puts pedal to metal and Hannah becomes "adopted" Jessie, doomed to a life of smothering love and material overabundance in Charleston, S.C., while her birth parents suffer and hope. On her way to NYU (instead of her parents' pick, Georgia Tech) Jessie detours through Washington and talks herself into a job as secretary to powerful Texas Senator Angus Kingsley, who has an icy wife, Alexis; a dying mistress, Irene; and a gorgeous son, Tanner. Jessie, of course, marries Tanner, and the trouble really begins. Long on episode, short on motivation, the novel offers scant payoff even in scenes that ought to tug the heartstrings, such as Jessie's reunion with her real parents. (A fine exception is the detailed, layered scene in which Mrs. Kingsley trashes the Other Woman's apartment.) The most vivid character in the book is Jelly, the yellow-haired dog who was guarding little Hannah and nearly died trying to track her. Not surprisingly, the funny bonus story at the end of the book ("A Summer Surprise") concerns a feisty woman vet who goes easier on her 11 pets than she does on her man.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 431 pages
• Publisher: Zebra Books (July 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821763075
• ISBN-13: 978-0821763070
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (69 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,119,022 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Fern Michaels is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Fool Me Once, Sweet Revenge, The Nosy Neighbor, Pretty Woman, and dozens of other novels and novellas. There are over seventy million copies of her books in print. Fern Michaels has built and funded several large day-care centers in her hometown, and is a passionate animal lover who has outfitted police dogs across the country with special bulletproof vests. She shares her home in South Carolina with her four dogs and a resident ghost named Mary Margaret.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Badly out of control, October 18, 1999

By 

Carol A. Strickland (NC, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Finders Keepers (Mass Market Paperback)

Although the narrative is clear and simple, I found the plot of this best-selling book to circle and shoot off in all directions. Worse than that, though, were the characters. They would progress to a certain point and then turn around, take a couple of skips, and reemerge totally unrecognizable and unrealistic. The most blatant of these was a character (I don't want to spoil it, but watch out here) who is a very good guy, then becomes a spouse beater/rapist, and then suddenly a good guy again. Excuse me? And what's this with golden retrievers living to be twenty? Why doesn't this lead character demonstrate any responsibility for contraception? And a woman who has held no jobs before suddenly becomes the best secretary in the Senate? There is a leap of faith in all good fiction, but here my faith stumbled, fell, and finally gave up before I was even halfway through. Imho: very bad soap opera. I hope the next book pays more attention to these most crucial of writing points: plot and character.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars depressing, September 16, 2002

By 

Talia Sloboda "tgmm" (Toms River, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Finders Keepers (Mass Market Paperback)

I hated it, It was a fast read but too many plot changes. I never really got to know the characters. It made me depressed that Jessie never found love, its supposed to be a romance novel right????

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Please read C.A. Strickland's Review!!!, February 9, 2001

By 

mayfayre "mayfayre" (New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Finders Keepers (Mass Market Paperback)

I don't know her/him, but that review was right on target! This was a story with so many plot twists thrown in that the author might just as well as thrown the kitchen sink in, too. The characters' personalities underwent such a change during the course of the story as to be totally unbelievable. It became tiring, rather than interesting, trying to keep up with what was going on. The ending just left me scratching my head - it was so rushed and out of left field, and so obviously a set-up for a sequel.

I got the impression reading this book that the author was hoping that it would be made into a mini-series on TV - it had every possible hook thrown in.

This was the first book that I read by Ms. Michaels, and it was a total waste of my time. I don't think that I'll be reading another of hers for a long time.