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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Bethlehem NY saga continues..., January 6, 2002
This review is from: Heaven on Earth (Mass Market Paperback)
When we last left our heroes: Private eye Melina Dimitris had just had a four-day torrid romance with cabinet maker Sebastian Knight who had cowardly and unceremoniously dumped her - Southern former bad boy Ben Foster (who had fallen in love with Melina's friend Lynda Barone) had just revealed to Alanna Dalton that he was her long-missing father - Alanna had difficulty accepting it and decided to run away to Providence to seek out the mother that had abandoned her for a life of drugs - to protect her, her friend Caleb Brown came along, and unbeknownst to them, 7 year old Chrissy Knight decided to tag along to find *her* missing mother. Whew! And that only touches on the multitude of storylines in Ms. Pappano's ongoing series about the people of Bethlehem NY - a comfortable and homely town, where the complicated romantic lives of its citizens get occasional assistance from a group of guardian angels. This is a throughly engrossing series, though each book is capable of being a stand-alone romance novel. This book primarily focuses on the sexual explosion that briefly occured between Melina and Sebastian - its effects on their lives and its fallout - and hunt for the three missing children. Melina is a strong, successful, gorgeous, independent and unabashedly sexual woman from a tightknit Greek family. She owns and operates what she calls the best detective agency in New York. She enjoys men and sex, and isn't afraid to be upfront about it. Sebastian is a handsome, lonely, divorced dad who's basically isolated himself from the world for the last four years after his wife of 11 years just left him one day without an explanation, leaving their small daughter in his care. His brief affair with Melina threatened to upset the order of his life and his ongoing mourning of his marriage's dissolution, and he broke it off abruptly. When the kids go missing, Lynda and Ben (afraid that his revelation was what caused Alanna to run away) call Melina and asks her to try to find the the children, since the police are limited in what they can do. Sebastian, almost beside himself with worry and guilt, manages to tag along with Melina on her search. The book traces the children's search for their missing mothers, introduces a 17 year old runaway who befriends them, and explores the continuing attraction between Melina and Sebastian despite their differing attitudes and emotional scars. Even without reading the other books, it's easy to pick up the threads of the various past and current storylines, and Ms. Pappano helps out things further by providing a list of characters at the beginning of this book. All of her novels that I've read so far are well-written and engrossing. Her characters are very believable, as are their behaviors. The guardian angel bit is never overdone or obnoxious. The romances are sexy, and while never following a straight path, always wind up where they should. Ms. Pappano is one author whose books I'd buy without even reading the backcover blurb.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
It's always the woman's fault in Bethlehem, May 9, 2007
This review is from: Heaven on Earth (Mass Market Paperback)
I was very disappointed in this book by Marilyn Pappano. Most of her books feature believable heroes and heroines and a plausible plot, but Heaven on Earth does not.
Every woman in this book other than the heroine is an evil bitch. Every man is a jerk, but only because the women make them so. You see, in Bethlehem apparently the men are unable to take responsibility for their own poor choices (although they of course always get credit for the good things they do, and often for the good things the women do). It's always some woman's fault that Sebastian is a jerk: his horrible skank wife, his horrible evil mother, even the heroine! He actually comes up with the excuse that he's a jerk because she makes him act that way.
It cannot be understated how annoying this "men always good, women always bad" attitude becomes over the course of a book of this length. Add to it a host of trite romance cliches (the innocent little child in distress, the tortured hero, the silly older woman, the matchmakers, the bitch ex-wife, etc., etc.) and the heroine's incredible attitude problem and you get a book that literally is not worth reading.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Only Because It's Marilyn Pappano, March 13, 2005
This review is from: Heaven on Earth (Mass Market Paperback)
Marilyn Pappano is my all-time favorite romance author, so she gets three stars for that. I've been working my way through the Bethlehem series, but I'll be honest - I don't know if I can stomach this one enough to get more than halfway through. Every book has gotten more and more sweeter-than-sugar and convenient than the last, with credibility taking a dive, and frankly, I don't like Melina; I didn't like her in the last book, and I like her even less now - real or make-believe, people who think and act like they're all that and then some tend to put me off. And I would certainly hope that a grown woman would have enough decency to put aside her animosity for a man whose *child* is missing, for crying out loud, not to mention be professional enough to treat him as a client instead of the man who didn't fall to his knees and bow before her - her inability to do so only points out her immature selfishness, as far as I'm concerned. How am I, as a reader, supposed to sympathize with her??
I'll stick with it because it's Marilyn - but only because.
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