5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting, riveting character study that's almost more about family dynamics than romance, 3-1/2 stars, December 10, 2008
This review is from: The Lies That Bind (Paperback)
On her website, SX Meagher avows that she writes books "about nothing." And indeed, the bulk of many of her books focuses on the psychology, the motivations, the inner thoughts of her characters, and how they form relationships with one another. I really appreciate her meticulous attention to the emotional details of her characters. I am a fan of her precise characterizations, her literate writing style, and how she doesn't dilute these strengths by introducing weak mystery or thriller elements. Her books are about people, and many of them are on my all-time-favorites list.
This book was certainly well-written and interesting, but I didn't quite get into it from a romantic point of view as easily as I often do. Katie Quinn is on her way to her father's new rural property to check on it when her car gets crashed into. Erin Delancy, local girl and town doctor, witnesses the collision, and rushes over to provide first aid. Katie is intrigued, and begins to tentatively pursue an often oblivious Erin.
Erin is used to being discreet about her sexuality, though she isn't in the closet per se. Her father and brother died in an accident when she was a child, and she's struggled to be a supportive daughter and good citizen ever since, to the point that she almost automatically sublimates any "selfish" thoughts for herself into what's best for those around her, her mother and her town, and it's made her rather detached from her own desires. She's usually not unhappy, but curiously isn't really happy either.
This accomodating personality landed her in a job she's fine with, until she realizes that she's panic-stricken at having to do it for the rest of her life. She loves medicine, but not the type she's practicing. She's best friends with her mother, but they also have a very careful, comfortable relationship where there's rarely any conflict until Erin begins to get in touch with her own emotions and opens up, and her mother begins a romantic relationship...with Katie's (practically estranged) father.
What causes the changes in Erin that start confusing her mother? She finally accepts that Katie is interested in her, and they really click, though Katie practically has to hit her over the head with it (figuratively of course). In trying to really understand her lover, Katie helps her to simultaneously begin to understand herself.
This book really focuses on Erin. Since she spends much of the book with a rather flat life emotionally, particularly in the beginning, it wasn't as easy to get into as some of this author's other works. It was interesting, though. Plot-wise, it was also hard to get a handle on where the author was going with the whole thing, and I like to have more of a sense of anticipation as I read. The journey was brilliant, though, in retrospect and really focuses on family drama and dynamics, which is something I quite enjoy reading about.
Don't go into this expecting a light and frothy romance, though there's no tragedy either. If you can relate to being the good daughter, the good neighbor until one day you wake up and wonder what it is you want, and realize if you grab for it, you're not going to be able to avoid disappointing people, you'll likely identify strongly with Erin and her journey. The book is filled with rich, three-dimensional characters, both main and supporting.
Erin's journey to emotional fulfillment with Katie as a catalyst is ultimately inspiring, and will likely linger in my head for some time, and I would recommend it to anyone who's looking for a romance that's a little more thoughtful, and has a little more depth than purely escapist fiction.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Newest novel By Susan X Meagher. 'Nuff said, no?, December 28, 2008
This review is from: The Lies That Bind (Paperback)
She just may be my favorite writer in this guilty pleasure of lesfic. Her approach to romance is slightly different in that she doesn't stop when the main characters get together but chronicles their lives a bit further (a lot further in her I Found my Heart in San Francisco series). I like that she's detailed, that she really gets into her characters, and that she writes well. It almost goes without saying that her main characters are always complex and interesting, because otherwise she wouldn't get so much 'story' out of them.
This one isn't different. Erin and Katie are believable characters that are fun to 'hang with'. They have believable problems (even though one of them sort of comes out of left field for me, it's hinted at but could have been fleshed out more to make more convincing) in their lives individually, and in finding their way into being a couple. The familial circumstances make for interesting reading as you get information about the person not just from the narrative but from conversations about them as well.
What intrigued me while reading it was the broad issue of coming out, the possible (negative) consequences of coming out all the way and how families deal with that. And while I'm kinda sick of coming out novels, and this really isn't one, the circumstances surrounding this are very interesting. It once more drives home the point that coming out isn't only about declaring your sexual identity, it's about finding your voice as a person, finding your own way in life.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The impact of change on a life, January 3, 2009
This review is from: The Lies That Bind (Paperback)
Erin Delancy thinks she has the life she wants. She has returned to her hometown to be the town doctor as part of a contract she made with the people for paying to put her through medical school. She knows every person, every street and every situation. Though her social life as a lesbian is stunted, the fact that she can live with her mother in the home Erin grew up in means that she's seldom lonely and always has someone to do things with. Erin's life seems just fine until two things happen. Erin meets Katie Quinn and Erin's mother meets Katie's father. These two incidents, which are totally unrelated, change everything about Erin's settled life. Katie is a bright, aggressive lawyer from Boston who is immediately attracted to Erin and she becomes convinced early on that small town life isn't all that Erin has portrayed it to be. She lives a busy life as a lesbian and has numerous friends who support and encourage her. Katie believes that Erin could be the perfect partner, but not if she is going to deny how she really feels about her situation and what she wants in her life. As their relationship develops, Erin begins to remember that she had dreams she sacrificed for what she believed was her duty and she realizes that Katie will never be happy living in tiny Essex instead of Boston, but she is bound to the position for ten years.
As Erin and Katie try to figure out how to deal with their situation, they also have to adjust to the fact that their parents have fallen in love and are planning on marrying. While Erin wants her mother to be happy, she resents the changes that are being caused in her own life and their relationship without being able to do anything about them. Katie doesn't mind Erin's mother. It's her father she can't tolerate being around. Having to interact with him when she visits Erin brings up sour memories from when he left her family. Neither one of them has spent any time really trying to understand the other, so their perceptions of who the other is often lead to arguments; however, with her father married to Erin's mother, Katie isn't going to be able to ignore him as she has done in the past. Either Erin or Katie is going to have to make some tremendous changes in her life to accommodate everything that is happening. The question is who, or if, one of them is going to be willing to do that.
No one will ever accuse Meagher of not thoroughly developing her stories or characters because all of her books are big in size. The reader has a real chance to "get into" her stories. The drawback to this is that there are many extraneous scenes that repeat the message that she is trying to send to the reader. The reader is liable to reach a point where she wants to say, "OK, I get it. Now how does this thing end?" On the other hand, the length of Meagher's books does allow her to develop nuances of a story so that they creep up on you and you feel you have a revelation in your own thinking instead of having every issue spelled out for you. Authors who write to meet the normal length of these genre books aren't able to perform this little bit of magic. Meagher needs to work on keeping that ability while accepting that not every scene is important to its development.
The Lies That Bind is about change. Change in relationships; change in perceptions; change in goals. It's also about how difficult change can be and sometimes how necessary it is. Meagher knows how to tell a good story, one that seems superficially to be another romance, but this one will cause the reader to think also. Don't let the length fool you. The reading passes quickly and it's worth it.
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