Customer Reviews

Obsession (Signet Novel)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(24)

 

 

What a convoluted mess. There are some good moments, especially the nail-biting chapter during which we are introduced to the heroine, who is being brutalized during a home invasion. But later revelations make the events in that earlier chapter utterly implausible.

Also incongruous is the way the hero and heroine seem to need no more than a nanosecond to recover from the most horrific events. He bites back a grin of amusement, moments after rescuing her from torture; she contemplates his powerful shoulders while the cigarette burns on her arm are still fresh. I'll admit I've never been tortured and rescued, but I suspect it would be at least an hour before I'd appreciate being teased.

An ambitious idea that suffers from overplotting.

I don't agree with most of those who reviewed this book. First, it's not meant to be a "romance" story. That's secondary to the main story. Or perhaps it's even third in line. And I liked the ending a lot---just don't understand what all the fuss is about.
I loved this book. I thought it was sitting on the edge of your seat and nail biting exciting. In fact, I found myself holding my breath during some of the excitement. I started this book before bed and lost a lot of sleep. I finished it long before 24 hours after starting. And to me---that's an awesome ride.
As you read this, Katherine isn't who she thinks she is----Dan isn't who Katherine thinks he is-----Ed isn't who anyone thinks he is----you spend the entire book wondering what the truth is about everyone and everything. It can be a bit confusing and far fetched. But I think it's truly a nail biter to the end. It keeps you guessing and I doubt too many readers can figure out what happens near the end before you get there.
It's not a romance novel, it's an action packed twisting and turning adventure into the land of the FBI/CIA and other alphabet soup organizations. Perhaps it's not as far fetched as one might think. But it is entertaining.
Karen Robards might be known for romance but not this time---it's an action packed roller coaster ride of a story.

Katherine Lawrence wakes up in the hospital after a deadly encounter with masked gunmen in search of the contents of a mysterious lock box located somewhere in her townhouse. The lover of a top ranking CIA official, Katherine doesn't know who to trust, and doesn't even recognize her own reflection. When neighbor Dan offers to help her elude authorities, she reluctantly chooses to trust him, only to discover that he might not be who he says he is either. With memories that don't add up, and only peripheral memories of the event itself (including the death of her best friend), she wonders how close to sanity she is.

Robard's latest thriller is a roller coaster ride of plot changes that really require a reader to pay attention and suspend belief. I had to skip back a couple times to catch up, which normally would annoy me, but I pretty much will read anything Robards writes. It reads like a fast-moving espionage movie, letting the reader in on the secrets at the last second. The romance is pretty limited and undeveloped (most of Robards novels appear to be going in that direction), but what little romance there is, it's crucial to the story. It kept me glued from page one, mostly trying to figure out what was going on. If I hadn't already been a fan of Robards and like her writing and plotting, I probably would have given up.

I read to "get away from it all" and I really enjoyed this book. It is very easy reading . I agree with another reviewer that it's not meant to be a "romance" story. Romance is there, but certainly not the priority of this story. I thought it was sitting on the edge of your seat and nail biting exciting. It was a quick read for me--shows how interested and enjoyable it was as I am very limited on time to myself to read.
As you read this, Katherine isn't who she thinks she is----Dan isn't who Katherine thinks he is-----Ed isn't who anyone thinks he is----you spend the entire book wondering what the truth is about everyone and everything. It can be a bit confusing and far fetched. But I think it's truly a nail biter to the end. It keeps you guessing and I doubt too many readers can figure out what happens near the end before you get there.
It's not a romance novel, it's an action packed twisting and turning adventure into the land of the FBI/CIA and other alphabet soup organizations. Perhaps it's not as far fetched as one might think. But it is entertaining.
Karen Robards might be known for romance but not this time---it's an action packed roller coaster ride of a story.

The face in the mirror isn't one that she remembers. Or the body, for that matter. The greener than green eyes are certainly the same but not much else is. It could be that her injuries sustained in a brutal home invasion have affected more than Katharine Lawrence's memory. The girlfriend of a C.I.A. director, Katharine knows that she has linked her fortunes to his and risen up through the organisation by association. Edward Barnes is arrogant, possessive and dictatorial; all assets to his occupation but not necessarily good ones to find in your lover. The men that attacked her and killed her girlfriend right there in her own kitchen weren't there to kill that night. Ed neglected to mention to Katharine that the house she lived in contained a safe.

Dan Howard, the hunky doctor from next door who rescues her seems to be holding something back from the confused and frightened Katharine. She knows that there is something more between than a neighbourly relationship, and it is killing her to try and think what it might be. Running from hospital when she learns that Ed's henchmen are on the way, Katharine trusts her instincts and again accepts the help of Dan to buy herself some thinking time. Why it that she feels her boyfriend is being way too keen to spirit her away, supposedly for her own protection? Katharine desperately needs some space to figure out why it is she feels so scared of Ed, and to piece together memories of a life lived once before; one that bears no resemblance to the life she is struggling with right now.

While OBSESSION is definitely a one-trick pony, it fulfils its purpose. Karen Robards regularly hits the best-sellers lists with fast, disposable romantic suspense that entertains and exits the mind five minutes after the book has been finished. OBSESSION has a compelling beginning to get that mind throwing out possible explanations as to why the young and beautiful Katharine (of course!) doesn't recognise her own gorgeous self or huge chunks of her world. Next come the dangerous thugs and frightening situations, forcing our dazzling young heroine to use all her wits and resources in order to escape and then there's the reasonably tame romance thrown in from the one source it could possibly come from. Yes this is all rather formulaic but there's a comfort in that when you choose to read a romantic suspense novel.

It seems it is more than difficult to please both readers who prefer their romantic suspense to concentrate more on the relationships, and to please those readers who stray in from other genres wanting more of a challenging crime plot with all its hoped-for challenging complexities. OBSESSION doesn't seem to take too much time worrying about waving the credibility banner as most of what the characters do in this novel defies all notion of good sense. It is best not to think too hard about it as we all know what will happen in the end anyway, and have a pretty good idea of how that will come to be. As it all plays out, we're pleasantly entertained with no particular reason to grind our teeth with tension or to nervously double-check the door locks that night.

Another breathless best-seller to-be from a very market savvy writer.

This book grabbed me from the first page. I was fasinated, I couldn't figure out what was going on but I definitely wanted to find out. Everything was wonderful until about half way thorough the book when you learned the answers to the questions, and after that it was just so-so. It was totally unbelievable and the hot romance never did develope. I read Karen for her wonderful mysteries and the awesome romance in her books but this time she left out both.

Katherine Lawrence is the mistress of Ed Barnes he is a high official of the CIA. She is caught up in his dirty business. He doesn't trust anyone and with the resources of the CIA at his disposal he is a bad man to cross. She comes across as very ambiguous.

Dr Don lives next door and when she is attacked he is the one who looks after her at the hospital.

I won't ruin it for you if you have spent all that money for it, like I did, but the resolution is stupid and what romance we see is very lukewarm. I did not like this book. I would not buy it again. I really am not interested in ever reading it again.

I begin to wonder if authors are running out of ideas and that is why so many new authors in paperback are writing better books.

This was the perfect book...you think you know what's happening, but you have no idea!! Then, to make it even more difficult, your main character finds out 3/4 of the way through the book that she isn't even who she thinks she is, due to some brainwashing going on. Really, this is a great book and I got sucked into it within 4 minutes. I didn't put it down until I finished it yesterday.

This book gripped me from the very beginning. I, like the heroine, found myself baffled by the turn of events. The plot resolved in a way that I hadn't anticipated.

Recommended.

This was my first Karen Robards book, and I should have chosen another. I read till page 100, and then put it down, deciding it was one of the worst books I've ever tried to read.

My problems with it are:

1. After surviving a home invasion and is in the hospital, Katherine Lawrence gets a call from her married lover, a high-level mucky-muck in the CIA. He asks her if the attack might have been done by "spooks", meaning covert operatives in the Agency. He says he'll have "some of his people" come watch over her while she's recovering.

After the call, she gets paranoid about how "his people" are going to try to kill her again, and escapes the hospital, IV pole and all. No one sees her, no one asks when she ducks for cover in another patient's room and pretends to be the patient's roommate's daughter. No one notices that she's wearing oversized clothes and too-small shoes. I work in a hospital and there's no way anyone would get out of the hospital like that. Security would be immediately called, if not the police department.

2. The first 100 pages are about how she doesn't know who she is, although she can remember the attack and most of the details about it. She knows her name, but not her face, and amnesia patients don't normally remember any of those things. Most amnesia patients have short-term memory loss, not selective memory loss.

3. It's too convenient for her neighbor, Dr. Dan, to just happen upon her and recognize her after no one else in the hospital did.

4. Seems like the entire plot was how she didn't know who she was, etc. When the second attack happens and the attacker still asks her where "it" is even after the safe was apparently taken during the first attack, that didn't make sense either.

The pretense sounds good, but Ms. Robards didn't pull it off. I've read 5 books in less than a week, and I couldn't even get through this one. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

I am a long time fan of Karen Robards and have followed her work from the early years of paperback historical romance through her crossover to hardback contemporary fiction. I have always enjoyed her work. Having said that, I was very disappointed with Obsession. I'm not sure where Karen was going with this story but I don't think she got there. This book is so far fetched and convoluted that it's just down right ridiculous and totally unbelievable. The heroine blunders her way through surviving on gut instinct and little else. I couldn't even cheer for the hero. I was disappointed that he would leave someone he supposedly cared about to stumble around confusedly in such a dangerous situation. The end did not justify the means. I guess everyone has their hits and misses, and Karen's Obsession was a miss for me.