Customer Reviews

Honeymoon Suite: A Novel

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

My favorite book ever is Return Proposal. Like that book, Honeymoon Suite has wonderful characters, a delightful family and Ms. Michaels' wonderful style and wit.

Sadly, she couldn't make two very important points work, try as she might. I cannot feel sorry for this family that is so poor it has to sell off the vintage Packard and the expensive art work so it can continue to live in a house "two football fields long and one football field wide". There ARE poor people who don't have vintage cars to sell off. Why didn't they just sell the estate, pay off the staff (yes, they still had a large staff) and get jobs?

Second, I can't respect a hero who tells the heroine he loves her a few hours after he married her sister. While his wife is sleeping off too much champagne, he's making his move on the sister. Okay so his wife didn't marry him for love, is it too much to expect him to wait for an annulment? Why was he such a jerk he married the gorgeous sister anyway?

I kept thinking, I REALLY like Ms. Michaels' writing--and I do--but she plotted a pit for herself her and could never quite get me to care.

I really enjoyed this book. However, I went into it thinking it a romance novel and was a little suprised. As a romance novel, it's not so good. There is next to no romance, and the romance that does come along; doesn't really make a lot of sense.

For the life of me; I CANNOT figure out WHY Dory loves Chase or when he came to the epiphany that he loved Dory. WHY does he love Dory? For the first half of the book all he talks about is how hot he is for her older sister Jill and does't give a second glance at Dory.

Then suddenly, he marries Jill and the night of their honeymoon, he has this great epiphany that he loves Dory? It was like they just threw that part in to make it a romance.

As a story about a family struggling to support themselves, the ancestral land and the staff that has become so much more, it's awesome. I love all of the characters, except for Chase really.

The only complaint I really have in fact is the "romance" aspect of it and the ending was more than a little unsatisfying. Aside from that though; it's a great book. I read it in two days!

The first time I read this book, I liked it a lot but Chase wasn't my favorite hero. The story line is excellent, the supporting characters are diverse and colorful, it has recurring visits from characters from past favorite books and it was full of humor. Then I reread it and realized something. Chase still isn't my favorite but I think he's one of the most real men you'll ever read about. He's not perfect, in fact he can be a real idiot at times. I know a lot more men like that than the perfect type! He's human.

I really like Dory, the heroine. She's smart and determined and spunky. My only complaint would be that she was way too easy on Chase. I would have forgiven and married Chase in the end also, but first I would have given him a harder time than Dory did. She's nicer than me! :o)

I'm sorry to say this book is a total flop. No Story, No indepth characters, and Nothing that can hold the readers interest. So boring I quit reading about half way through. I'm sorry I wasted my money on it.

In 1988 Kansas City, wealthy Daddy Lambert and his chauffeur Charles McKay catch the former's daughter Jilly with the latter's son Chase. Daddy pays for Chase to attend Cornell as an architect student while mom takes Jilly to Europe with her, punishing her other daughter Dory for spying on her older sister.

Several years later, Mom pressures her Daddy into hiring her English nephew James at the Lambert Bank and Trust. Over the next few years, Dory obtains a business degree, Chase becomes a wealthy successful architect and due to his aunt, James becomes the wire room supervisor. In 1994, while Daddy and Mom cruise the Caribbean, James and an accomplice embezzle 34.6 million, but the evidence incriminates Daddy too. Daddy and Mom live in exile to avoid arrest; Dory and her aunt struggle to save the family fortune and make retribution to investors. However, when Chase returns to Kansas City, he and Dory are attracted to one another, but he seems to spend his time with Jilly. Will he select the wrong sister again even as personal problems involving the missing James continue to surface?

This is an exciting contemporary romantic suspense though the intrigue plays more of an enabler than that of an action thriller as readers see how various members of the Lambert family cope with adversity. Dory and her aunt adjust nicely while Jilly struggles but tries. On the other Mom is a caricature who is unable to see how her actions led to the downfall although James is the culprit taking advantage of his relative's stupidity. Fans will enjoy this fine family drama.

Harriet Klausner

Personally I thought this book was a great read. It kept you wondering but then threw you off at points making you think something was going to happen that didn't or wanting something to happen and made you wonder if it would. It was funny & romantic at the same time and it kept a good storyline in between.

Office Manager
(...)

This was a great family novel with colorful characters. The storyline was very involved with the main character Dory's rite of passage from age 14 to 31. Her one constant: her love for the chauffeur's son, Chase McKay, will break her heart. Chase went from being banished from the estate for having a rendezvous in the stable with 17 year old gorgeous sister Jill (albeit with paid college tuition to lessen the blow)to become a multimillionaire architect. Now he has the means to ease the pain and suffering inflicted on the family via an unscrupulous former employee, Dory's mother's poor judgment and her father's obsession with agreeing to her mother's wishes no matter what the cost to the family. But Dory doesn't want Chase's money; she wants his love. It's Chase that does not see things clearly, who Dory calls a "pompous, arrogant, condescending ass," while he fights his attraction for her in lieu of her flashier high strung sister.

The character development of the family matriarch Aunt Ping and the employees of Outlook Farm that they are all working to save is very fulfilling. What goes around comes around in the end.

Dory Lambert was living a privileged life and nursing a life-long crush on the chauffeur's son (who has eyes only for her sister, Jill) when her father was accused of fraud. Suddenly Dory finds herself poor and struggling to keep her family's estate intact for her aunt. Her idea to turn their estate into an exclusive hotel works perfectly and things are finally turning around for her when Chase, the aforementioned chauffeur's son, returns.

Chase McKay has a little bit of a chip on his shoulder. The family his father worked for all of his life sent him away to college after he was caught in a compromising position with Jill, their daughter. Now worth upwards of 9 figures, Chase has returned to his childhood home be with his ailing father, who he hopes to convince to retire and come live with him.

This is the first Lynn Michaels book I've ever read. I decided to give it a try because she's been around for a while and I thought, hey, why not? Anyone who's published that many books has to be pretty good, right? Wrong.

"Honeymoon Suite" is written in what I'd describe as a Susan Elizabeth Phillips style. We follow the heroine around for a few years before we get to the meat of the romance. The problem is that instead of the early years being a time where we see Dory developing into a character who needs someone like Chase in her life, we're really just being told the sob story about Dory's family losing their money. We have to follow the whole Lambert clan through their overblown reaction to their circumstances, and I am bored to tears.

The romance itself barely begins before it stalls for nearly half the book while Chase picks up where he left off chasing after Dory's sister Jill and eventually marrying her. He seems to be living out this adolescent fantasy about proving everyone wrong or something. And we're supposed to believe he's an intelligent high-powered businessman! Dory is in sadly unrequited love with this moron and we're supposed to hope that she eventually ends up with him. She's such a martyr, though, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised she'd want someone who seemed incapable of appreciating her. Dory has to sacrifice everything to save her family, she forgets about having a social life for basically all of her twenties because she's too busy looking after everything, she has to take in the orphaned child and raise him as her own, she has to be worshipped like a goddess by the household staff for whom she'd do anything. It's just ridiculous.

I give this book 1 star because that's as low as I can go. Too many characters, the over-baked loss of money storyline, an unlikable hero, a far too good to be true heroine, and some of the most boring pacing in the world make this book something you'll want to avoid like the plague.

I read this book because of a review that lauded its humor and style. The only reason it has 2 stars is for the humor and quick pace. There was no romance, no conflict between the hero and heroine except that the hero, Chase, seemed to be the biggest idiot with the largest chip on his shoulder even for the people who helped him. Sure he was sent away by his employers, but hey, he got a fully paid college education out of it. And the people at the house, the other servants that helped raise him? Forgets about them, even when he returns to visit his father. Everything was resolved entirely too quickly and in a truly unbelievable way.

I won't be reading another Lynn Michaels book.

This is without a doubt one of the better stories I've read this year. Although the storyline is not new (girl falls for boy, boy falls for sister but realizes that the other sister is the "one") the way Ms. Michaels created her characters made this a "one of a kind" read that will stay with the reader long after the final page. This was the first time I've ever read Ms. Michaels and needless to say I'll be ordering her back list soon.

This story kind of reminded me of the re-make of "Sabrina" with Harrison Ford with a twist. Dory can't remember a time that she did not love Chase McKay the chaufferu's son. He breaks her heart though when he is found in a compromising situation with Dory's perfect and beautiful older sister Jilly. Sent away to college Chase leaves and doesn't look back. That is until his father's health causes him to do more than look back, he comes back to Outlook. He thinks he's got his act together since he is an exteremly successful architect but truth is he thinks wrong...way wrong and before the dust settles he's going to find himself married to both Lambert sisters before he realizes that what he didn't think he wanted was the one thing he did.

Dory's heart is broken when Chase leaves but it's not long before her life is turned upside down and the privilaged life she was leading comes to an end...sort of when the Lambert fortune is stolen from them by means of an illegal wire transfer. Now her parents have to hide in order to prevent her father from being arrested and Jilly, Aunt Ping, and Dory must find the louse that stole the money while keeping a hold of the family estate. Of course this is not an easy task, but Dory can handle it...can't she?

This was a great story full of humor, and friendship between family as well as a romantic story. Chase is not the birghtest bulb in the shop when it comes to realizing what his heart already knows. This is truly a story with a wonderful cast of both primary and secondary charactes that each bring something special to the story. This is truly a modern day romance where the girl is not necessarily waiting for the prince to save her, but is willing to roll up her sleeves and do it herself if she must while at the same time being patient waiting for her prince to get a clue.

Ms. Michaels is an author that I highly recommend if you like a smart fast-paced story with endearing characters.

Official Reviewer for www.romancedesings.com