Customer Reviews

Play Dirty

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(28)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

I have been a fan of Sandra Brown for years. Her writing style is always brilliant and amazes me. The stories she creates are so intense and deeply detailed, I am always surprised.

While I don't fault the writing, I just didn't' find myself liking the characters of Griff and Laura. Griff Burkett was a star of the Dallas Cowboys who tossed it all away by getting caught up in gambling and wound up loosing not just his job and reputation but went to prison for five years. Laura Speakman is devoted to her husband Foster, and was driving when they were in a horrific auto accident. She basically runs the company and has given up everything else in order to care for him. He has lost feeling from the waist down. Foster wants an heir. To avoid negative publicity he has convinced Laura to have a baby his way. He wants her to conceive the natural way with his a chosen substitute - Griff. The fact that Griff agreed to this made his character more appalling, and the fact that Laura also agreed, made her character equally not likeable.

I didn't feel any chemistry or real emotion between Griff and Laura. It felt very forced.

I hope her next book is better.

First let me say I was not sure I liked Griff Burkett at the begining of the book but by the end I understood him alot better. Griff was a shinning light of the Dallas Cowboys who got caught up in gambling and wound up loosing not just his job and reputation but five years of his life to prison. Now when he gets out he has nothing, his lawyer loans him a car and some money to rent an apartment. Griff has to find a job and nobody wants to have anything to do with him.

Foster Speakman the owner and CEO of Sunsouth airlines has invited Griff to his home, possibly to offer him a job. Foster is a paraplegic, he and his wife were in a car wreck and he is wheelchair bound. His wife is a beautiful career minded woman who worked for him before they married.

Laura Speakman was driving when they were hit by a truck and she has shouldered alot of the responsibilities that were Foster's. She is devoted to her husband and has given up all her interests in order to care for him and take care of those things important to him. She can not help but feel guilt for his physical problems. He is unable to feel anything from the waist down.

In the two years since his accident he has been upset over not having an heir. He has finally convinced Laura to have a baby. But he is determined to have it his way. He wants her to concieve and deliver a baby, in the natural way with a chosen surrogate. Griff is offered 100 thousand dollars now and 500 thousand when the baby is born. Then one million each year of the child's life.

Although I found it hard to like a man who would accept money for such a thing, we later find that Griff is not without some sympathy and compassion. I found the story interesting and read it at one sitting. It was a bit hard to get into and if I had it to do over I probably would wait for the paperback. None of the characters were very likable.

I'm a big Sandra Brown fan, but lately, she's been really "hit-and-miss" for me. This one was mostly a miss.

I have to agree with those who are saying the main characters are very unlikeable. I have the feeling that Brown wanted us to really feel that Griff was just a misunderstood guy, and maybe create some kind of tension because we were never sure if he was really a good guy or a bad guy, and that's fine, but I guess I need my heroes very clearly defined as good guys from the beginning.

I also had a hard time feeling anything for Laura. She seemed very detached from everything. I kept hearing about how she really loved her husband, but that attraction and love was never really well defined. I never felt that they had that very close relationship. When it was explained how they got together, I got more a feeling that the situation between them was comfortable, so they got married. They kept telling each other they loved each other, but I wasn't feeling it. Certainly not enough from her to think she'd go along with his plan involving Griff. I didn't even feel enough sympathy from her for her husband to warrant her wanting to go through with the plan. I basically felt nothing from her. I was not ever in any way emotionally engaged with her or her "plight."

Given that, I didn't really see why she and Griff had such an emotional bond, if that's how Brown was trying to portray it. He was unlike-able, she was unemotional and detached. The only thing they had to form that bond was that both of them had been celibate or too long. Not a really good basis for any kind of a love story. So, again, I ended up not feeling it. If they'd have had some kind of an emotional spark when they first met....I might have felt better about their relationship. I wanted to get the feeling they felt for each other from the first moment they met, and were fighting that despite the circumstances, but I never did. Again....it was all very oddly unemotional.

Perhaps Brown was trying to convey that emotional connection between Laura and Griff, and I just missed it. Personally, I think it's Brown who missed it.

It's really a shame, too, because I found the other aspects of the book good, and the storyline very suspenseful, which is why I didn't give this a worse rating.

But, overall, a bit of a disappointment.

Fallen Dallas Cowboys QB Griff Burkett has just left prison after a five year stint for illegal gambling and throwing games for million dollar payoffs. He's lost everything to pay his fines and legal fees. Not really employable, he answers a request from eccentric billionaire Foster Speakman. This is no job offer he expected - Speakman wants Griff to impregnate his wife Laura since a car accident (with Laura at the wheel) has left him paralyzed and he and Griff share attributes that would make it easy to pass the kid off as his. Laura begrudgingly goes along with the deal, literally grinning and bearing it, until something changes between her and Griff. Meanwhile Griff's syndicate associates are convinced that he retained money from a dead bookie, and his nemesis Rodarte wants to see that he gets prosecuted for the death of the bookie, as well as the location of the ill-gotten gains. When another suspicious death occurs, fingers point to Griff, and he goes on the lam to prove his innocence.

I had a hard time staying tuned with Brown's latest. Though purported to be a love story between Griff and Laura, I wasn't feeling it. I felt there were more sparks between Griff and his longtime friend and madam, Marcia. Laura was just a huge hunk of milquetoast and it was obvious she loved Foster (despite in typical romance fashion the author decided to make him not so likeable in order for the other love story to be more compelling). Laura and Griff lacked chemistry. I liked the Rodarte character - particularly the twist in his identity and what was making him gun for Griff in the first place. As a mystery it was a good story; as a romance, well below the bar.

Diana: Some things are not for sale.

John: Such as?

Diana: Well you can't buy people.

(Quotation from the movie "Indecent Proposal")

This book pulls a switcheroo on the "Indecent Proposal" plotline, where a wealthy man offers a cash-strapped couple one million dollars in exchange for certain favors.

Short Attention Span Summary (SASS):

1. Ex-quarterback Griff Burkett has just been released from prison

2. He's admitted to receiving a payout for influencing the outcome of a game to facilitate some unsavory characters

3. He may also have murdered somebody

4. He's definitely not a nice guy

5. A wealthy businessman is desperately seeking an heir

6. He's confined to a wheelchair

7. His young wife is prepared to go to any length to fulfill his wish

8. The businessman makes Griff an indecent proposal in exchange for a decent cash payment and his silence.

9. Apparently, some people CAN be bought

10. Griff has a dangerous and ruthless enemy who enjoys seeing him suffer

11. Griff suffers

12. Intriguing premise turns absurd, and despite some page-turning action, the ending is rather preposterous

If you can get past the fact that all the major characters in the book are unlikeable, the beginning and middle sections of the book are entertaining, albeit unbelievable and unlikely, but when you get down to the ending, the story unravels untidily while attempting to tie off the loose ends.

Amanda Richards, May 30, 2008

Sandra Brown is one of my favorite writers but found this book to be a bit of a disappointment. Her writing style as always is excellent and the the plot was intriguing. The main characters were not likable but the book was good most of the way through. Near the end it began to get drawn out and boring.

I just finished the book last night, and being a fan of Sandra's I hate to say this wasn't one of her best. It had very little suspense and romance. It was also very predictable, I was only surprised twice in the whole book. My advice is if your a new reader of Sandra Brown, don't read this. For suspense I would recommend HELLO DARKNESS. For general romance I recommend any one of hers.

Okay, first let me say that I'm a big Sandra Brown fan (that's why I'm giving it two stars instead of one) and I read every new book she publishes. I have not been too thrilled with her last two, so was hoping for a better result with this one. Well, unless you want to imagine that something like this would happen in real life, then go ahead and read it. If you need a Sandra Brown fix, then all the ingredients are there: sex, murder, the hunk, the cool, intelligent female and more sex. The premise of this book is RIDICULOUS. What husband would ever ask his wife to sleep with another man to get her pregnant, and what woman in her right mind would go along with it??? I don't care if he had OCD and she had guilt b/c of her husband's crippled condition. He's SICK and she's a MORON. Give me a break!!

I loved this book. When I finished, I contemplated beginning again. I tried to read the book several times, but set it aside. Once I got into the erotic fantasy of it, I was captivated. The book is all about setting the reader up for reversals. This is meant to be diverting entertainment, not serious fiction. The only reason I paused in my efforts to consider other novels by the same author in order to write this review is that I think the now running tally of three stars for this novel may turn away readers who would thoroughly enjoy this diverting tale.

After staying away from Sandra Brown the last few years, I was pleasantly surprised by Ricochet last year. So when my bookstore handed me Play Dirty, I decided to buy it, hoping that SB had returned to her previous sensual romances.

Well, I was wrong about the sensual romance. There is hardly any between the H&H so don't go buying this book expecting a good ol' Sandra Brown of old - the one who gave us the unforgettable Slow Heat in Heaven, Where There's Smoke, etc.

Having said that, Play Dirty wasn't bad even if I missed the steamy romance. I did that by playing the book out as a movie in my mind. That worked because it IS suspenseful and fast-paced. Griff was a refreshing change from the typical romantic suspense hero. You know the one. He's totally alpha, is the expert at his profession and in control all the time. Not so with Griff. I have never wanted a book to end just so the hero could be put out of his misery so this is my first. Griff's circumstances, from start to end, are such that I was groaning in sympathy and helplessness for him.

This is not to say SB's latest hero is a loser but he must have appeared jinxed to himself. The heroine did not fare so well in this book as it was very much Griff's story. As a result, Laura's character was underdeveloped and it was hard to sympathize with her. If SB had given us a chance to know her better, I would have been able to buy into Griff's falling for her. As it was, he hardly got the chance to know her and all the reader gets is a bit of background info on her relationship with her husband. All Griff and Laura had were a couple of sessions of sex-for-procreation and even though they do finally do it for pleasure, that does not for a romance make.

SB gets around this by having their romance begin only at the end of the book. It worked for me but SB has not returned to auto-buy status with me.

The solution to the possible problem posed by Griff to Laura's husband is so obvious the reader would be able to pre-empt it the minute Griff agreed to the plan. Despite this, the book is good enough to have kept me turning the pages wondering what would happen next and why. While I enjoyed the book as I was reading it, in hindsight it is not the type of story I would automatically buy within this genre. I still want a strong romance when I plonk down my money for a romantic suspense and Sandra Brown these days does not give me that. In my opinion, her books shouldn't be put under the Romantic Suspense category anymore.

For those who enjoy suspense and a strong romance, do read Karen Rose's latest. Die For Me has a wonderful, sensual romance between two very likable H & H without neglecting the suspense.