6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Predictable Radclyffe, November 27, 2008
This review is from: Night Call (Paperback)
Night Call is another Radclyffe novel based on an area that is familiar to her as a retired doctor, the medical profession.
Jett McNally is a helicopter pilot and a veteran of the Middle East war. She's having trouble getting over what she saw in combat, plus she's trying to mend from a broken love affair, so working the night call flying the medivac chopper at a local hospital suits her fine. She can live a shadow existence without attracting much attention, she thinks. Dr. Tristan Holmes is highly respected for her skills as an anesthesiologist and is well known for her "love them and leave them" lifestyle. She's not looking for a relationship, but can't help being fascinated about the enigmatic Jett when they start working together. She becomes determined to discover what makes this woman tick and finds, to her surprise, that she might be interested in more than just adding another notch to her bedpost. Drs. Honor Blake and her partner Quinn Maguire, introduced in earlier books, are central figures in this story. They provide a picture of wedded bliss and family ties that encourages Tristan to keep pursuing Jett, no matter how distant she seems.
Night Call is another romance written in the style that Radclyffe's fans have come to expect and enjoy. It tells a familiar story of two women who meet, overcome an obstacle and find each other, with some sex scenes to spice up the plot. There was real potential in this story for Jett McNally's situation to be explored. The role of US women in a combat zone is a new one with many complications of adjusting to those duties while not really being considered battle ground soldiers. This would have been a chance to examine the feelings of those women and the struggles they go through in a system that is confused about their status, but Radclyffe didn't choose to take that course except on a superficial level. The opportunity to tell a fresh and topical story was bypassed in favor of a more routine romance. That will certainly please the die hard fans, but the possibilities that are glimpsed in this book will make some readers wish Radclyffe had used her considerable talent as a writer to do something different.
If the reader is looking for a predictable story that hits all of the expected buttons, then Night Call fits the requirements. It's easy escapism for a few hours of entertainment.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not my favorite, September 9, 2009
This review is from: Night Call (Paperback)
Disappointed...not my favorite Radclyffe. The Jett and Tristan storyline was exhausting. I didn't like the tortured head games they played. The only thing that kept me reading was hoping Honor and Quinn would pop up occasionally.
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Night Call is bad call, September 26, 2009
This review is from: Night Call (Paperback)
I have read some of Radclyffe's other books, and while I enjoyed them somewhat more than I did this one, they seem to all fall into the same pattern. Not only that "girl meets girl, girl fights obstacle, girl and girl live happily ever after..." but the pattern of the lesbian Utopia that Radclyffe visits every single time, where there are only lesbians and lesbian friendly people as far as the eye can see, and also that the dialogue between all her characters fall heavily, if not pretty completely, into one of two camps, either telling each other how much they love each other, or what they are doing to each another sexually. There is never any depiction of lesbians as real people in their interactions with each other, or anyone else, having real conversations and emotions and moods and moments of flat out snarkiness or anger or pain, except when character is about to succumb to the best sex she has ever had, after which everything is hunkydory, true love is declared, even if they have only known each other for three days, and they ride off into the sunset together. This sums up Tristan and Jett completely.
Honor and Quinn are a long term couple who, like all of Radclyffe's other couples, say little to each other except how much they love each other. Angelic child, invisible grandmother on site whose sole function is to do for them and serve them, even literally calling her to tell her to come over and make breakfast for them. Not one moment of post partum or complication response from Honor. Not one thought even of annoyance or anger from Quinn when Honor insists on going to work after the huge accident, only days after being near death giving traumatic birth. Not one moment of brattiness from angelic child. Not even one moment of snarkiness from the grandmother, who might rightfully wonder, since Quinn and Honor were both extremely busy doctors who already had one child she had to care for,and as she was already waiting on the three of them hand and foot, why they chose to have another child.. Not one real natural emotion,or sharing of thoughts and feelings day to day, only repeated "I love you's."
I know Radclyffe can write better than this. It seems a laziness to just keep casting different names, and the nonstop "cutesy" whatever names are wearying too, Saxon, Pearce, Winter, Jett, Tristan, Quinn, Reece, Arly...??? into the same old same old. How about some character humanization and development? How about some plot development? Unfortunately lesbians settle for poor quality fiction as it is mostly what is out there. Don't settle!
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