Customer Reviews

Holly

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I would have thrown it across the room! Really.

Stupid characters in books annoy me - and Holly really takes the cake. Supposedly she's a "prude" but actions speak louder than words:

1. Falls into a pit and strips down to her panties to attempt to make a rope to get out.
2. Has sex with a stranger approx. less than one hour after meeting. Within approx four hours has sex another three times with same stranger who doesn't learn her first name until after she leaves.
3. This same stranger finagles a job at her Dad's house, as a gardner, to get closer to her - which to me would yell "stalker" but to her it just says "Run out into the yard and have sex against a fountain."
4. Is in the attic of a house that doesn't belong to her, going through someone else's papers, and decides to disrobe down to her underwear because she's hot.

Okay, I've just got to stop there otherwise I could just go on until I ran out of the maximum word space. But you get the idea. She's an idiot and just a bit of a tramp.

I love Jude Deveraux. I've read all her books. The amount of sex in them has never bothered me before but this is really going overboard. I was literally skipping pages and *still* coming to sex scenes! Honestly, I couldn't tell you what the story was about because it was basically just two people having a lot of sex.

(...) if the story doesn't stand up without all the sex, perhaps it's not that good of a story to begin with.

Again, I have been dupped. I bought this book in hopes of an uplifting Christmas themed story. Well, Bah-Humbug! This one just didn't do it for me. I love Jude Deveraux's work and had high hopes for this one. Unfortunatly, it let me down. Maybe it's me, maybe the stress of the season leaves me unable to fully enjoy a book, but I just couldn't "get into" this one. The story feels rushed, too much too soon, especially where sex scenes are concerned. Don't get me wrong, I am all for a good sexy read, but I was looking for a more sweet type of love for a holiday book. The cover felt slightly decieving to me as well. It looked as if it was set in another time period. If someone who had just picked it up for that reason, they would be disappointed. The title character, Holly herself, just wasn't all that likeable either. She wanted to marry a man for his house. Nick was decietful and seemed to have alot of extra time on his hands. I had a hard time figuring out why he was pretending to be who he was. All in all, I just didn't understand this book. I wanted something with a little redeeming quality to it. Check out Jude Deveraux's other works though, they are fantastic.

I have been a fan of her novels for over 10 years. I think they are usually warm and funny and extremely well written. This book was not. It lingered on sex scenes and rushed through the plot. The usual family element that makes her novels so wonderful, revisiting old characters and just spending time with the Mongomery-Taggert family was missing in this book. Also the major events of the novel happened so quickly taking up a paragraph or two while the sex scenes go on for several pages. Just not what I would expect from a Jude D. novel

This latest offering of Jude Deveraux has a lot of sex. The last four or five Deveraux offerings had none, zip, zilch, zero! Now that every other word, thought or action leads Holly and Nick to...well, you know, I can't really quite complain. HOWEVER I WILL! Too much sex or too little sex does not a good romance make. Too much and the book is trash, too little and you might as well be reading a cookbook. Jude needs to find a happy medium and stick with it. She should know how to do this; her earlier novels prove it!

I thought it was hilarious how everyone around Holly believes her to be a virginal, innocent, angelic little girl. I'm assuming they never spent a lick of time with her or else they would know that this little vamp is sleeping with strangers on the hood of her car! Another thing that was terribly stupid was that this Holly chick could identify the age and value of an antique comb at a glance, but when given a unique and rare canary diamond, believes this multi-million$$ bauble is just a piece of glass and tin! Please! I know I probably wouldn't be able to tell a real diamond from a marble, but I do not profess to be an expert at valuing anything.

However, in the grand scheme of things, this book was much, much, better than any of the last four or five (maybe even six) novels by J.D. For me this is saying a lot as I have HATED her recent novels with a mad passion! I would also have preferred it if she wouldn't have plugged her next novel in the ridiculous "Forever" series by bringing in the annoying Darci (will she EVER go away?)

My advice is to try to borrow this book from a library or a friend. Don't waste money on it if you're hoping it may be a classic Montgomery/Taggert novel. It isn't.

This must be the worst book Jude Devereaux has written. The characters seemed to be in the wrong time. He should have been dragging around a club. They act like cave people with carnal urges and no morals or self-control. Sex in a mini-cooper and later--on the hood of a car--is not my idea of romance. This is one book I would like to return for a refund. I wonder if Devereaux wrote this book because it is definitely not up to the caliber of others of hers I have read. Do not waste your money, if you want a book with substance.

After nine months of seeing Stephanie Banning, Dr. Nicholas Taggert ends their relationship because she is too selfish. However, the sly Stephanie insures that most people believe Nicholas played her unfair. Needing to escape from the underserved criticism, Nicholas hides in a remote garage next to an isolated cabin near Edenton, North Carolina.

When she learns that Lawrence Beaumont III is divorced, Holly, felling lonely, returns to her hometown to be near him because she has fond memories of him. When she was thirteen and he was three years older, he treated her to the most wonderful summer of her life.

Holly meets Nicholas for the first time at a convenience store where both are shopping. After he leaves, the owner warns Holly to avoid him. He insists that Nicholas must be a felon as he lives in the home of an incarcerated thief. In spite of the birds of a feather alert, Holly and Nicholas begin seeing each other while Lawrence believes that she is his divine right because of his upper class blood. Holly and Nicholas may be attracted to one another, but she thinks he is a bum and that Lawrence is her one. He needs to tell her the truth, but also must keep her safe as someone wants to harm her.

HOLLY is a warm romantic intrigue that is fun to read especially as Holly and Nicholas falls in love. The lead couple is a delightfully charming duet who are sold as individuals, but really fine together. Though a suspense laden subplot adds tension it seems very out of character for what is known of the villain. Still the audience will fondly regard Jude Deveraux's latest tale.

Harriet Klausner

who thought this book was stupid! I've enjoyed thoroughly several of Jude Deveraux's books but this one was awful! I got to the scene after Nick rescued Holly from the "pit" and then they start making out and almost threw the book across the room. The waitress thought he "kidnapped" Holly because she went down the same road he did? Holly stripped down to her panties in a pit with dead animals in it? She starts making out with a complete stranger because he "saved her life"? Please. How stupid and contrived. I am not even going to waste time finishing it.

Is someone else ghost-writing for Ms. Deveraux now? This book didn't even read like hers. Yuck. Amazon won't let me leave off the stars rating, so I give it one star, but I really want to give it a rating of negative 5 stars.

I must admit to throughly enjoying this read by Ms. Deveraux. Again we visit with the Taggert/Montgomery Clan in this holiday read.

Hollendar (Holly) Latham has two loves. The first is for any building constructed before the Revolutionary War and Lorrie Beaumont her first childhood crush. Holly thinks that she may finally be able to have both her loves to herself after all of this time. That is until Nick Taggert saves her from herself and totally changes the way she thinks and feels after a weekend of love and laughter.

Nick is tired of women that play coy, pretend that he is all that they want when in reality all they really want is entrance into the best family and all the perks that come with that appointment. So he is totally surprised when he finds and rescues Ms. Holly and finds that she is more then just a pretty face. She makes him laugh at not only life but peoples perceptions. After spending the weekend with her he is not quite ready to let her go waltzing back into Lorries life (she explains her hopes and dreams during the weekend) and plans a way to show her exactly what she could be missing if she decided to go with her first love and not door number two...Nick.

This was a very lighthearted read with romance, love, mystery and that special something that makes a Jude Deveraux book a Jude Deveraux book. If you are a long time fan of this very talented author you will not want to miss this read, if you are new to Ms. Deveraux you can't go wrong with cutting your romantic teeth on this one!

First, let me say that I have read almost all of Jude Deveraux's work, and have loved it, especially the Montgomery and Taggert families' stories. However, if Holly is the new standard, I won't be bothering in the future.

Several major plot points are glossed over in a paragraph or two, such as Lorrie's actions, which are completely out there, and poorly explained. Character development is adequate for Holly and Nick, but the others are cardboard. And frankly, I thought the sex scenes were awkward. They were more explicit than her usual work and I don't get the feeling that she's comfortable writing that way.

In a nutshell, I was disappointed and I think I'll stick with re-reading A Knight in Shining Armor and some of her earlier work.

Unlike other reviewers, I had no expectation for a Christmas story, but I did have expectations of the signature mark of Deveraux's talent with building three-dimensional characters and relatively realistic plot lines.

Sadly, "Holly" contains neither of those elements. In it, we meet Hollander Latham, a wealthy heiress who, several years previous to the opening of the book, fell in love with a neighbor boy, Lorrie, and never got over him.

Time and circumstances separate them for years but when she hears that he's recently divorced, she sets out to buy and restore a house adjacent to his own so she can make him fall in love with her.

Meanwhile, doctor Nick Taggert has grown tired of spoiled women who're interested in him only for his money and family name, so he decides to hide out in a remote plot of land near Holly's fixer-upper house.

They meet in strange circumstances one night and, though Holly doesn't know Nick's a doctor, he first orders her not to go to sleep because she might have a concussion (she fell through the floor of a house)...then, like 20 minutes after meeting they have sex.

Yes, that's right. They have unprotected sex AFTER he--a doctor--warns her that she might have a concussion.

Honestly, when I read this part of the book, my mouth dropped open and I was tempted to check the cover of the book to see if Deveraux was the true author.

Usually, I give her credit for her amazing character-building. We see the tension rise and rise over an extended period of time and then, and only then, do her characters fall into bed together.

But this...this was just weird an ubelievable. Within the space of a chapter after their first meeting, Nick and Holly have sex at least another four or five times...unprotected. Did I mention that he's a doctor?

I truly think this MIGHT have been able to be a plausible situation--the emotionally lonely socialite hooking up with a world-weary doctor--but Deveraux takes no time to set the scene up. It's really just a literary version of Wham-Bam-Thank you, ma'am.

The rest of the story feels the same way. I don't know what happened, but I didn't feel like I had an "experience" with the characters after this book...it was kind of like Deveraux said, "Well, there was a rich girl and a doctor, but, long story short, they have sex and fall in love. The end."

This definitely isn't what I expected from Deveraux. At all.

Definitely a disappointment.