Customer Reviews

Silver Falls

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I like Anne Stuart. I like her morally bankrupt heroes, her neurotic and mouthy heroines, and I love how far she pushes the envelope of behavior. I like her old stuff, and I like her new stuff. I just like her.

So please consider that when I say, don't buy this book. Close your eyes and pretend that it isn't even part of Anne Stuart's body of work. Because this is without a doubt the worst thing she has ever written in at least two decades.

Rachel, our heroine, is brain-dead. That somewhere along the line she received a lobotamy is the only explanation for her truly, dismally idiotic behavior. It is painfully obvious from the beginning (yeah, even Stuart gives up the 'suspense' element of the big seecret at about the second chapter) that Rachel has married a serial killer, and one who has a fixation on her daughter. Rachel is constantly presented with things that would send even a fairly dull-minded heroine fleeing for the door (gosh, my husband sure is controlling. gee, he seems weirdly fixated on me signing certain legal documents. wow, isn't it weird that we've only had sex once and that I've never seen him naked? huh, it seems a bit strange that he continually tries to remove all signs of my presence in this house. crikey, you actually mean that I've never been inside his locked home office where he keeps a shrine to his own killings and talismans of his victims?) yet she stays. People around her (best friend, father-in-law, hot brother-in-law) keep warning her about her husband, yet she blithely returns to him. She actually *goes home* after the hero tells her to her face that the husband is a serial killer -- after *she herself* basically responded, "Yeah, that does seem to make sense."

Reading a book with a heroine this deeply stupid is a waste of time, and too frustrating for words. Rachel has a few cute scenes with the hero, which is why I gave it two stars, but not nearly enough to make up for how stupid she is for the entire rest of the book.

Let me put it this way -- a mentally retarded labradoodle would've lasted until maybe Chapter 4 before saying, "You know, hot brother-in-law who I've already macked on, you make some valid points about my husband. I think I'll take your advice and take my daughter to the nearest airport and never ever come back."

I don't know if Anne Stuart just really needed a paycheck, or if her publisher was pushing her, but this book was just a dud. The rest of her books run from fine to great, but just forget that she ever wrote this.

I am a huge fan of Anne Stuart, so when one her books come out, I am super excited. But Silver Falls was not one her best. Dont get me wrong, it was a decent book, but not the usual Stuart book. First off, you know who the bad person is from the start, when usually in her books, there is always that doubt with the main hero. Secondly, it just did not have the suspense between Caleb and Rachel that Stuart usually has. So I am giving this book a 3. It was ok, but not an Anne Stuart Best.

I am an Anne Stuart "groupie". I read a few of her earlier books...loved them....and went on to purchase her entire backlist. I've been slowly and surely been working my way through all her earlier books. When I saw that she just came out with Silver Falls, I decided to fast forward to her newest work of fiction. I should have stayed in the past!!!!!!!

This just isn't that great of a book.....(shocking coming from a reviewer who at worst gives Stuart 4 star reviews). There is very little suspense, and David is just downright creepy. Rachel is a character I never connected to. She seemed a little "to stupid to live" and claimed to want what was best for her daughter while making all the wrong decisions. Her language is vulgar, and her "tough girl" act just didn't work for me at all.

Caleb is another one of Stuart's bad boys, and I have to admit that I liked him...but I like all of Stuart's heroes. His arrival to the plot is this book's only redeeming quality, but I did question why he was into Rachel....was it because she was David's wife or in spite of the fact?... I just don't know.

I'd skip this one....or check it out from the library if you must read it. Early Stuart books like Nightfall, Ritual Sins, and Lord of Danger made me a fan for life. Luckily Silver Falls wasn't my first Stuart book because I would've missed the brilliance of this author's breath of talent.

I actually liked Silver Falls. There were certain elements that some readers may not like but to me the story worked. There is no real mystery because the author lets the reader know what is going on pretty much from the beginning. Still the story moved at a good pace and kept me reading to the end.

Wow, I'm not even sure what to say about this book. Rachel's fundamentalist parents disowned her when she became pregnant as a 17 year old. Rachel, working as a photographer, and her daughter Sophie roamed the world taking pictures. When Sophie turned 13, Rachel married the perfect man, David Middleton and settled in the perfect place Silver Falls, Washington. She is trying to live a perfect life, but several months after settling there a young woman's body is discovered. Enter her mysterious brother-in-law Caleb.

The book is labeled romantic suspense. Not so much. You figure out quickly who is killing the young women and then you have to scratch your head and ask, how dumb can you be Rachel? I can only believe the author meant for you as the reader to figure out 'who dunnit' early on, but the bigger question then becomes why? A big portion of the suspense that one expects from a mystery or romantic suspense is gone. The fact that the killer is so obvious to the reader has one questioning Rachel's intelligence.

The story did not sustain my interest. I sort of sped read through the last half as there seemed to be no reason to continue reading with bated breath. The issues I had with the mystery were prominent in my dislike of the book, but I also found the heroine to be incredibly annoying in her stupidity. It was hard to believe that she had roamed the globe as a photographer and not had gotten some "street" smarts. Caleb, the hero, now I did think he was hot!

If you are a die hard Anne Stewart fan you may like this book. But then again, you may find yourself asking "what was she thinking?"

I have only read a few Anne Stuart books, but I've liked them all. This, however, was a mess! You have a heroine who was kicked out of her family for having a baby at 17 - she managed to make a life all over the world for the two of them raising her daughter in her strong, independent footsteps - but all of a sudden she's a complete idiot doormat? She doesn't get that her daughter is uncomfortable around her new hubby? Daughter is so smart but honestly thinks mom is "madly in love" w/new hubby - yet as we read we never see any sign of happiness between them, so where did daughter get this idea? Police chief suspects hubby of being serial rapsit/murderer, but does nothing about it? Wife tries to convince herself she is happy, even though she's disgusted with her husband's way of eating, the fact that they have NO sex life, his overall weird, controlling, passive-agressive personality, and feels the need to hide all her thoughts, feelings, even her favorite clothing, from this controlling psychopath? Yet she is thinking of letting him adopt her 13 year old daughter? B-I-L shows up and...boom! She's hot for him, vice versa, and at the end, although they've really spent no time together at all, they are in love, and daughter is on board with the whole thing, no residue anxiety about the fact that her former best friend was killed by step dad (who was basically stalking daughter as well), leaving new bff, getting new step dad, and off to New Zealand?? Arggggg! I could not believe this was Anne Stuart! Where were the intriguing characters w/backstories, fast moving but believable plot, etc.? I would not recommend this to anyone!

Wow, where do I begin? I did not like the main character, she was a ditz whose daughter was WAY more mature. I can not believe any responsible mother would stay in such a bad situation. The characters were not well developed and most totally unlikable. And the fact that she is attracted to her brother-in-law who she suspects is a killer is unbelievable and gross!

There is no intrigue to this book, we all know who the killer is and even he does not seem believable in his methodology.

All in all, it was a waste of my reading time.

I have read about a dozen of Anne Stuart's book. The ones I enjoyed were Lord of Danger, Winter's Edge, Wild Thing, and Shadow Lover.

A usually reliable genre writer, this time Anne has done her readers a disservice.

Not worth reading. Let me repeat. Let this one pass. I think she needs some time in the wilderness. She's done the marriage to a serial killer a long time ago and much better than this lead-footed book.

This is NOT an Anne Stuart work, I read it to the bitter end - it was a total waste of time. No where even close to her other outstanding work......especially her "Ice" series. I just hope that Ms. Stuart does not go the way of Linda Howard.......

This was one of the worst so called "love stories" I've ever read. It wasn't merely bad, it was horrendous. The heroine was withouta doubt one of the dumbest characters I've ever had the displeasure to read about. This book was absolutely unbelieveable because it's hard to believe that people that completely retarded actually exist. This woman was supposedly a "loving" parent who was close to her child, yet for like a year she and her daughter had a misunderstanding about how the daughter felt, when it was simply something that every parent with half a brain asks their child before getting married. Also, I don't know about you, but if I had to ask a total stranger to watch out for my daughter to make sure that my husdand didn't hurt her, that is a clue that something in your relationship is wrong and you need to leave. The heroine obviously too stupid to raise a child and social services should have taken her a looong time ago. And, the romance wasn't even there. Sorry, but I don't think that the heroine hating the hero for most of the book, having a one night stand with him, then hating him again contitutes as a love story. Then, they decided they loved each other on the last page. Someone actually published this trash? It's a shame when the stupidity of a character you read in a book actually keeps you up at night, wondering how they possibly managed to interact with normal people.