Customer Reviews

I'm in No Mood for Love (Little Black Dress)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This is a very luke-warm, inane, romance. I didn't hate it but I didn't love it either. The heroine is luke-warm, both in character and romance. She is one of the writers who is friends with Lucy, from SEX, LIES, AND ON-LINE DATING. It looks like each friend is going to have her own story. I didn't care for them as secondary characters and they make poor primary characters. It seems they only have a life in the books they write.

Clare Wingate writes romances. Her mother is ashamed of the books she writes. She catches her fiance in the closet, in more ways than one. First he is having an encounter with the washer repair man. Two he doesn't think he is gay. This is just one of several romances that have gone wrong for Clare. She immedately gets drunk and ends up in bed with the bane of her childhood. She thinks they have been intimate and he lets her think it. Only later does he tell her they just slept.

Sebastion is the son of her mother's gardner and handyman. He loves to give her a hard time. Later, only after she has gone through the embarassment of telling him she is aids free does he tell her they didn't do it. He was a lukewarm committment phobe.

Later, they decide to have an affair with no strings, sound familiar? Then of course after several months, she decides she loves him, so he splits. But he cannot stay away and so we have a happy ending. The romance was tepid, the plot was slow, the whole thing was just so forgettable. The last three novels by Ms Gibson have not been up to her standard. I really don't want to read any more tales of these four pathetic women. Alas, I noticed her next novel will be about Maddie Jones. You'll have to take your chances with this one.

Unfortunately, this much-anticipated book turned out to be a bust. Note to all authors: If you transition by using months (ie. By December,... It was now June...) more than once in a novel, you're getting bored and chances are, you'll start boring your readers as well.

The book starts out on an intriguing note as Clare wakes up to find she's apparently spent the night with the sexy hero, but from there, it quickly begins a downward plummet of ho-hum plot action. As it turns out, she didn't do anything with Sebastian, a sad fact that won't be remedied until three-quarters of the way through the book. (Where is the romantic plot, you ask?)

The hero is constantly in another town, only dropping by for sporadic visits that could take place over years or months--Gibson changes months and flashes through time so generically that it's impossible to tell. When he's finally around, the romance fizzles rather than sizzles.

As heroines go, Clare is self-absorbed and whiney, static and shallow. Her own romance novels are excerpted in another way for Gibson to putter around in this let-down and avoid writing the actual book, and they ring false and silly. Her friends are more interesting than she is and even they are stale by the novel's end.

In all, the characters are a yawn, the plot is filler, and the romance is nonexistent.

The title of this review pretty much says it all. While the book is still a decent romance novel, I was very disappointed throughout reading it (hoping it would get better) and even more so once it came to its end. I have come to expect better from Rachel Gibson (one of my 5 favorite authors up to now). The greatest disappointment lay in that there wasn't at least one line or scene which gave my heart a little squeeze or skip. The book was just so average and unexciting. (For a brief summary, see reviewer Harriet Klausner's description.)

Although I have to admit that part of the let-down might have come from months and months of waiting for this book (and having read the great 'preview'), I also think that the book was uninspired. And at least two sentences I have seen (almost) verbatim in previous Rachel Gibson books. Sure, an author should be allowed to repeat some lines (and I have noticed those 'repeats' before), but in this book, it started to be annoying. If there are going to be lines out of "See Jane Score", couldn't there also be the endearing thoughts Luc has about Jane, or the hot dialogue? Or the love and longing from "Truly Madly Yours"? It gets old to have a commitment-phobic guy in every book, to have the woman always realize she's in love first, to have an overly macho guy (is a man only a hot alpha male if he doesn't like - or pretends not to like - small dogs, can't tell colors, hates shopping, is lace-phobic, etc...?).

And while I appreciate the fact that 'romance novel' does not have to mean constant interaction between the male and female protagonists, but can also include great friendships and personal growth, I found the focus on the separate growth of these characters too much.

Also, I think the reader never learns what Clare likes about Sebastian apart from the fact that he is hot, that she had a crush on him as a kid, that he can tease her like no one else and that he gave her a thoughtful gift?

It would have been nice to have read more about the small quirks they noticed in each other and came to love or other thoughts they have about each other. And maybe, if one of Gibson's male characters came to realize he loves the woman before she does, the endings would start to be more emotional and not seem like a sensible wrap-up. (The formula of "woman realizes she loves him, tells man, he freaks out, little while later also realizes he loves her, confesses his love, happy ending" has been used a bit too much by Gibson, I think).

If you're a Gibson fan, you'll probably want to read this anyway (and I'm glad I did), but don't expect to learn much about Lucy and Quinn (no direct scenes with both of them in it) or to have much magic (in the way of "Truly Madly Yours", "See Jane Score", or "Sex, Lies and Online Dating"). It's still a good effort, but there were no emotional dialogues or scenes that made me heart feel a bit funny and glad and reminded me of why I read romance novels in the first place.

PS: (The sex scenes were okay, although one of them did feel very much like a Luc&Jane one.)

Clare Wingate has given up on love. After finding her fiance in the closet with the Sears repairman, she decides a major life overhaul is needed. What she didn't expect was to wake up naked in a hotel room with her childhood nemisis, Sebastian Vaughan. Remembering him as the boy who threw mud on her white dress and explained to her about where babies come from, Clare has little hope she would like him much as an adult.

Sebastian Vaughan is back in Boise, Idaho to get to know his father. After the death of his mother, Sebastian realizes that he doesn't have all the time in the world to mend fences with his father. While Sebastian and his father, Leo, find their way to a father/son relationship, Sebastian and Clare find they have more in common than they thought.

As the two get involved, Clare is determined not to bring her expectations of love into a relationship of lust. It's not until Clare realizes she's almost 35 years old and in a relationship that's going nowhere that she knows she can't keep seeing Sebastian. Though she didn't expect it and didn't want it, she fell in love with someone who will never love her back.

Clare and Sebastian's relationship is highly entertaining. Throw in an obsessive-compulsive mother and a nosey group of friends and you have Clare's life. Clare is someone who has to talk herself into being in love to have sex. That has made for some interesting relationships. Sebastian spent his childhood moving from state to state with his mother, who could never decide on one man and stick with it. What these two have to go through is heartwarming and amusing.

whomever wrote the excerpt on the back cover of the book should be paid more, because she/ he makes the book sounds like it could be an interesting book, but lo and behold when you read it it falls flat. or maybe the author is just good with making up an interesting premise, but fails on execution.

it's not a romance to me. sorry ms. gibson, too much things going on but with the romance the story seems it's just scratching on the surface. i think i'll think twice before picking up another book.

for a good read, always go for linda howard's, karen robards', jude deveraux's or lindsey's.

I loved Rachel Gibson's first six books, "Simply Irresistible" being one of my all-time favorites. I have continued to read her novels, but with less anticipation each time. Her latest lacks in both an interesting plot and in character development, i.e. likable characters you can connect with. I also recognized some wording that is identical to her other books. There just doesn't seem to be any love lost between her main characters, it's all about sex. Sex without feelings (even the typical unrealized or unadmitted kind) is not romantic. I donate all my books to the library. Maybe I'll go there are check out her old ones.

I loved everything I'd read by Rachel Gibson up until I read this book. Don't get me wrong, it's fine if you've got nothing better to read but the plot was flat and the characters forgettable. If this is your first book by Rachel Gibson please give her other's a try. Sex, Lies and Online Dating & See Jane Score are two of my favs.

Her writing is good and very readable, but she writes the same novel over and over and it is the same novel Susan Elizabeth Phillips writes over and over.

You always know the hot guy is going to be all about sex and the poor girl will fall in love with him first. He'll reject her on that ground, but miraculously discover that he loves her in the end.

These should not be called "romance." They are in fact anti-romance. The guy is all talk about sex so soon in the relationship that real women would run screaming from the guy thinking he's a pervert.

And what's with the green eyes? These authors are positively obsessed with them. And with nipples.

And the sex is so repetitive and gross. The heros have no romance to them at all, they are talking dirty so soon in the relationship.

After the highly disappointing "Sex, Lies," I was hopeful that Rachel Gibson would deliver a story with the same quality as her earlier work. Sadly, this is not the case here. She writes with little emotion or zest and the book is dull and uninteresting. For the first 200 pages or so, the characters barely interact and when they do, it's with childish and immature behavior. Perhaps if there were some flashback scenes which could have explained the hostility between the two, it would have made more sense.

When Sebastian and Clare finally get together, the story improves. I'm also getting a bit tired of Gibson's habit of waiting until the very last pages for the man suddenly, out of the blue, decide he's in love and proposes marriage. Can't we have a bit of courtship and true romance? Isn't there room in her books for some happiness and emotion to show the two truly falling in love?

Gibson also borrows heavily on plotlines and passages from her earlier books. On her website, Gibson addresses her readers' complaint that she misspells the names of previous characters. She reples, "I guess I should read some of my older books." Yes, she had better do that right away, because any Gibson fan (as I am) will recognize elements of this story have already been used in other books. And, darn it, if she didn't misspell another character's name -- Jane Alcott is spelled "Alcot" -- from "See Jane Score!"

One more thing. . . it's almost become a running joke to try and find all the typos and errors in Gibson's books. This one is FULL of them and I actually found myself laughing -- not at the story, but how any self-respecting editor could let them through. Rachel, I hope you are not paying much for your editor. They are SO not worth it!

Rachel! Snap out of it and give us what we first loved about you! I don't want to believe you've jumped the shark!

I've been a big fan of Gibson, particular See Jane Score, but I was very disappointed in this one. The beginning was promising--but the rest of the book was pretty darn lackluster. The development of the "relationship" was a series of short encounters, variations on "and then, 3 weeks later, they met up and had sex." Eh. Not worth buying perhaps, but not a bad library read.