Customer Reviews

Meet Me in Venice

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

 

 

From Paris to Shanghai to Venice and the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Elizabeth Adler takes the reader on a suspenseful adventure filled with romance, murder, handsome strangers, dowager aunts, and a mysterious treasure.

Precious Rafferty is an American expatriate living in Paris. Her small antiques store and close friends are her life until handsome Bennett James walks into her world. At 38, Precious is not as sophisticated as the reader might expect, and this intriguing man sweeps her off her feet in a whirlwind romance that is too good to be true. The fast-paced action is just beginning as we discover Bennett also has a connection with Precious' cousin Lily in Shanghai, a relative she has never met but who is also in the antiques business. Alas, Lily's business is decidedly shadier and most of her deals are done in back alleys and are highly illegal. With the help of her assistant, Mary Lou Chen, an unscrupulous beauty, the two walk a highly dangerous path. Mary Lou has fallen in love with Bennett and his trail of broken hearts from Shanghai to Paris is about to converge in Venice.

Adler lets us escape into the luxurious life of jet-setters and those who aspire to be jet-setters. Her trademark skill in recreating the local color of the world's most exotic cities serves the reader well here as we are treated to a costume carnival in Venice, the quaint cafes of Paris, and the underworld of Shanghai.

Let yourself get caught up in this gripping tale of deceit and desire and enjoy the trip to some of the world's most exciting places.

Honestly, I found this novel mostly annoying. The personality of Precious, the main character, I'd characterize as a mixture of naiveté, stupidity, and childish willfulness. Not as cute as the author probably intended.

And while I am not a raging feminist by any means, haven't these feeble, stubborn femmes who require rescuing by a smart, strong hero become a dated cliche by now? I mean, rescuing is ok, but the stereotype of a woman, dumb as a tree stump, contrasted with the clever, sharp man, is just... yuk. Not amusing.

Nor did I find the storyline particularly believable. The lack of coherence included things like characters murdering other characters for reasons completely lacking in any logic. For instnce, an intelligent murderer would certainly not murder someone from whom he expects to gain a fortune until murderer is quite sure where the fortune is and how to get it. It felt like this was a movie in which some of the important parts got left on the cutting room floor.

I was left wondering... did Elizabeth Adler actually write this book?

Getting through this horrid novel was an ordeal far worse than the perils the moronically named "Preshy" or any of the other ridiculous characters in this monumentally stupid book had to face. It made one long for a canal to drown in (the evil murderer's venue of choice).

The supposedly liberated heroine (she must be, she and her friends use the "f" word) was incapable of making anything other than the stupidest of decisions after excruciatingly detailed, I hesitate to use the word, "thought" processes. In the end, she still had to have a man (complete with a past) come to her rescue. Unfortunately, he made it on time... Predictably, the evildoer suffers the same fate as his too dumb to get away victims, though I'm sure the author saw it as delicious irony.

I suggest cleaning the bathrooms, even public ones, as a more worthy occupation than reading this vile insult to female intelligence.

I am new to Elizabeth Adler's books, but please, please assure me that others are better than this one. Her protagonist, with the unlikely (and speaking of cringe-inducing) name of Precious, is 38 years old, owns her own business in the most sophisticated and pragmatic city of Paris, and she falls for this guy's quick line and pretty smile, not once but twice? Refuses to believe that two identical murders are linked? Runs all over the world because "she just has to give him a chance to explain?" Puh-leese. I love light romantic suspense as much as the next person, but halfway through this book, I decided that most of the characters, to quote my Southern friends, "deserved killin'." Some depth and credibility -- somewhere -- are needed here.

Precious (Preshy) Rafferty and her cousin Lily Swan have never met. Both women happen to own antique stores, but they have little else in common. Precious is an American living in Paris, single but surrounded by supportive friends and family. Lily is Shanghainese, and she is wed to her work, driven by her desire for wealth after having grown up in poverty. She supplements her income by trading in stolen antiquities, a dangerous business that involves handing wads of cash over to hoodlums in the middle of the night. She has few friends, and the person she most relies on, her assistant Mary-Lou Chen, proves to have been poorly chosen. The lives of these three women, Preshy, Lily, and Mary-Lou, are all affected in the course of Elizabeth Adler's novel by one particular antique--a necklace whose pearl was stolen from the grave of the Dowager Empress of China--and by the charming sociopath, Bennett Yuan, who will do anything to get his hands on it.

Meet Me in Venice may not be the best book you'll read this year. Adler's villains are two-dimensional, and she tends to spill her characters' back story onto the page without great subtlety.

"While Lily's father played the tables, her mother attempted to make a living selling cheap copies of antiques. Somehow the family scraped by. When she was sixteen her father died and Lily left school and took over the business. Her mother died five years later. Lily was alone in the world with no one to rely on but herself."

I found references to Preshy's friend Daria's "Super Kid" cringe-inducing. And I wondered at Adler's decision to give her main character the name "Precious": it is so unusual that one cannot help but be reminded of another literary Precious, Mme Ramotswe of Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. (It's rather like naming a character "Sherlock." You're certain to distract readers by calling to mind that other Sherlock.)

I came away from Adler's novel, however, reminded of how delightful an escape reading can be. Meet Me in Venice is a solid romantic mystery, light on character, perhaps, but with a decent plot. Adler makes you root for her protagonists and boo her bad guys and hope that the right people wind up together in the end. I'm glad I read it.

-- Debra Hamel

I had never read Adler before and I may not after this story.

Basically you start in China with the Antiquities smuggler Lilly who inherits a valuable necklace. Her friend who wants to take it; hooks up with the overly gorgeous widower. He learns of the necklace and of the cousin with the wealthy aunt. He dumps the friend and heads to France to meet Precious. They decide to get married and head to Venice where he leaves her at the alter after learning she will inherit nothing. Precious tries to get on in life, is told a murderer is after her and in the end has to be saved by a the famous detective novel writer and her aunts.

Overall the story was so weak I knew who was the murderer after the character was introduced.

The novel writer was supposed to draw suspicion as to being the murderer or an accomplice especially after Precious learns of his wife's questionable suicide. But I decided this was not so since he appeared so late in the story.

Precious was supposed to be innocent but I found her annoying and a whiner. I found her cousin Lilly more interesting.

I wanted to like her crazy aunts but they were basically Auntie Mame.
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I found the end to be rather lame. The author gave the murderer a karmic end but it was just for a lack of better words "yawn"

The only thing I liked was the narrator Carrington MacDuffie. I liked her voice....

Elizabeth Adler has created a fun, intriguing thriller. Well written and able to keep your attention throughout, the antiques world in Shanghai was never so exciting. Good character development. Great book for the summer reading season.

I read this in two days. Fast paced with wonderful characters and locals. Felt it ended abruptly but no matter, another great book by Ms Adler. Thank you. Look forward to the next one.

This is my first attempt at reading any of Ms. Adler's works and I am not sure if I should take it as representative or not, but I found it to be very silly in concept and execution.

I am not sure if this book is supposed to be a gothic romance novel? (you know, the kind where the innocent heroine is rescued from the bodice ripping bad guy) Is this some sort of a thriller? Is it supposed to be a mystery? A travelogue?

It has elements of all those things but they are really put together in a most unusual way. The book starts with the murder of a plain young woman in a town in China. While the culprit is not identified, the attentive reader figures it out in the very next chapter. So, there is no mystery as to who the bad guy in the story is. Next we are treated to a mysterious pearl that disappeared from view some decades before - only to resurface in this story. This pearl is of course valuable beyond belief and immediately kicks off a series of events that culminate in multiple murders and attempted murders.

We are introduced to Lilly Song - who is an antiques dealer in Shanghai and her co-hort Mary-Lou Chen. We also find out about Lilly's cousin named Precious Rafferty who is an American who lives in Paris. The two cousins have never met but they both deal in antiques. Somehow, even though they know of each other only via family telegraph, they have each other's cell phone numbers (but they never speak?), email addresses (but they never write to each other?), and business addresses (??). When it is needed, it seems, it is possible for them to know what is needed about each other.

When Lilly realizes that she is in danger because of the famous Pearl, she flies off to Paris. However, this is in mid-winter and a storm closes down the airport causing her to be diverted to Frankfurt. From there she takes a flight to .... Venice! Preshy manages to find out about this and she hops in her car and drives to the south of France to then fly to Venice. Huh? Look at a map of Europe - it would have taken the same amount of time to get to Venice directly.

Also, what is this with all the money being spent so freely? People who can barely make ends meet with their antique stores have no trouble booking flights at a moment's notice to anywhere they fancy. 5-star hotels are the norm, and eating at famous restaurants is a walk in the park. Also, didn't the author realize that you can't just board a plane at whim these days? Many countries require such things as passports and even visas. Another example of this is the bad guy - here is a scheming wanderer who kills one woman but is denied her money yet he manages to spend fortunes on flights all over the world, car rentals, expensive hotels and restaurants and gifts. How can any of this make any sense?

The heroine turns out to be Precious Rafferty who has an interesting tendency. She is an American who lives in Paris so, I suppose, she speaks French pretty well. Nonetheless, when anyone in the world wants to find her, she is easily found in empty restaurants. At least twice in this book, she is approached by a man who is conveniently placed right next to her - obviously the author does not frequent too many restaurants...

Another oddity was a scene where Pershy is concerned about going to the police in Venice. Immediately her rich aunt flies in from France with her lawyer in tow who clears up the mess. Um. Hello? Venice is in Italy and the legal system would require a lawyer who is familiar with the nuances of Italian law. Hello!

Which reminds me - how come everyone in this story speaks American English? In Paris, Venice, Shanghai and more, all that anyone needs to use is American slang. OK, maybe in the touristy spots that might somehow works, but there is a key scene in a small market out of the way in Shanghai. To expect to have a vendor who occupies a tent in a local market in Shanghai to be a fluent and nuanced English speaker is way too much of a stretch.

Even with all these faults, though I found that I enjoyed readng the book and was pulling for Preshy. Maybe it was the zaniness of everything and how silly it all was. Maybe it was the very simple plot with the neon advertising of what the next plot twist will be. Who knows. I only know that I liked it enough to give it a second star.

I've never read Adler before and cringed when I discovered Adler's heroine is named Precious but I read on because of the promise of Venice delights. This isn't great literature, nor was it meant to be and should not be judged using that criterion. This is a light read full of romance, a mystery and interesting locales in not only Venice, but Paris, Shanghai and the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It's perfect beach or airplane reading. I look forward to reading her other novels to while away the time on my next long haul flight.