Customer Reviews

Sweet Baby

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

From the very beginning, you feel sympathy for Tory Lancaster. What it would be like to only be six years old and come home to an empty house and your entire family gone. Luckily twenty five years later she has fallen in love with a man whose only concerns lie with Tory. His love is genuine and although it seems far fetched from reality to meet a man with that much compassion for a woman, romance books are of interest to most women for the mere fact that they want to experience something that they themselves have never witnessed in a man. Brett Hooker is unlike any other man, and you can't help but to wish that some man cared for you with that same amount of passion.
This story is one of those ones that hit you square in the chest. It is not suspenseful in an action packed way, but there is that element of being a low key page-turner. You can not help but get a little choked up while reading this book. It will tug at your heart strings on a couple different levels. It is classified as a romantic suspense, but I would classify it much more as a contemporary romance with a hint of suspense. If you are looking for an action packed suspense with a touch of romance, than this book is not for you. On the other hand, if you would like to read something that will clearly make you feel the power of love than buy this book.

In 1973 Arkansas, six year old Victoria Lancaster was abandoned. Due to selective amnesia, the trauma of coming home to an empty house has been buried deep in her subconscious. Over the subsequent years, Tory's childhood memories revolve around being bounced from foster home to foster home. For the past three years, Tory has lived with DA investigator Brett Hooker. Over the past quarter of a century, he is the only person to slightly dent Tory's emotional shield, but even he knows that in spite of their obvious love for each other, the ephemeral Tory is incapable of any deeper commitment.

Her last photo assignment had Tory away from Brett for six weeks. However, though their lovemaking reaches stratospheric heights, something seems to be bothering Tory. A picture of a tattooed person that she recently shot has invoked hidden memories and has led to gruesome nightmares. Between this and Brett being shot on the job, Tory fears being abandoned again. Though thoroughly frightened, the intrepid Tory decides it is time to confront her past, regardless of the danger it leads to, if she is to enjoy a future with the man she loves.

SWEET BABY is an ingenious psychological romance that allows readers to see first hand the childhood traumas affecting an otherwise tender but dauntless individual and the man willing to risk everything to protect her back. The story line is both emotional and fast-paced, a rare summit that only the supreme scribes such as Sharon Sala can successfully scale. Fans of psychological romance will cherish this keeper.

Harriet Klausner

It seems lately when I send a review that I've read a different book than everyone else. I found the female lead in this book unsympathetic and the male lead a bit of a wimp.

Torie has been with Brett for four years. The last three, they've been living together in "his" apartment. In Torrie's mind nothing is theirs or even hers. Everything is Brett's. Brett's bed, Brett's chair, Brett's bedroom. Speaks of a lack commitment or permancence on her part.

Torie keeps simply disappearing from Brett's life with no warning and rarely even leaves a note. She never bothers to tell him where she is and he has no way to get hold of her in an emergency. Jeez he could be dead and buried for all she knows. Occasionally, she might send a postcard, letter or leave a message on his answering machine. On very rare occasions he actually gets to speak to her! She`d be gone 6 or 8 weeks, stroll back in, and never tell him where she was, what she was doing or if she'd been with someone else. Or not. Yet Torie makes Brett constantly promise he'll never leave her. She has a problem because of being left in her childhood. Why then would she constantly hurt the man she cares about by doing the same to him? Probably because she knows she can.

Yes, she had horrible, horrible things happen to her in her childhood and they needed to be worked out. But Torie wasn't interested in getting help. If she'd really cared about Brett she would have broken it off with him completely so he'd have a chance with a life with someone who truly cared about him. She even leaves him shortly after he's been shot. She later admits; "I come and go with no regard for your feelings. I act as if I'm the only thing in the world that matters." Ya think?

But in all fairness Brett let her use him. He took whatever she wanted to give him and was her willing doormat. He spent half his time in fear that he'll wake up or come home from work and she'll be gone. Yes, he loved her. But after awhile he was just being a fool. There is a line between loving someone and remaining loyal to them; and allowing a person to walk all over you. And as a twist on the usual "woman apologizing to man for what he's done wrong", Brett apologizes to Torie for what she does wrong.

I just couldn't have much respect for either one of these people and by the end I didn't really care what happened to them.

This author was in my Amazon.com recommendations list and I decided to try one. I'm really glad that I did! This book made me laugh and cry. It's the best that I've read from a new author in a long time!

Last night as I was sorting through my books to decide 'what's a keeper, which ones can go' I found this book again. Sweet Baby is a very strong story and very emotional. As soon as the story starts with the homecoming of six-year-old Victoria in an empty house, you are totally absorbed. Victoria had a very horrible childhood and now, as a woman, has a relationship with Brett, a cop. Brett is a wonderful man. He knows Victoria has some strange things, but he loves her unconditionally. We slowly are informed what exactly happened to Victoria. I always cry at the part where Victoria 'breaks' (when she arrives at the empty apartment) and Brett finds out about her childhood. Together they search for the truth. This is really really one of my keepers....

Sharon Sala has outdid herself with this one. Brett is the ultimate hero - caring, sensitive and most of all devoted.

I found this book sometimes difficult to read just because of the emotions that it evoked in me but I could not wait to get to the end to find out what happened.

I will recommend this to my friends.

In my opinion, this is one of Sala's best. It was an emotional read for me from the very beginning. It's a contemporary and features one of the most sensitive "good guy" heroes I've ever come across in a novel. No annoying arrogance and impatience, just lots of understanding _and_ he looks like Mel Gibson :) You know from page one that he is deeply, totally, in love with the heroine and you feel it throughout the book. The heroine is the troubled one in SWEET BABY. She's had a hellacious past that she doesn't remember and it's kept her from committing to the hero. She walks in and out of his life and not until she recovers her memory will she be able to give her heart completely to him. With the hero's love, patience and police background he helps her confront the demons in her past. He gets my vote for #1 hero of the year.

I didn't mind this book. It had its moments but I find that Sala tends to use stereotypes. Nice people are always beautiful and often a tad too sweet. Bad people have tattoos, beards and piercings. It gets very predictable. Perhaps she should write fairy tales?

Also, god help us all, she tends to like, god help her, using the same melodramatic phrase for characters throughout the book, god help them, so much that it stops, god help her, having any effect at all. God help us all.

Spoiler:
In one of the dream sequences (that actually turned out to be a memory) Sala also writes about the heroine's mother making a doll when the young heroine has gone to bed. It says how the mother has taken it out every night to sew, so that it will be a surprise for her daughter.

How then, years later, can the heroine remember something she never saw?

Sharon Sala can be hit or miss with her books, but with "Sweet Baby", she has a definite winner on her hands. This maybe considered one of her best.
Victoria or Tory as her boyfriend Brett calls her, came home to an empty house when she was seven years old. Her parents were gone and the house was empty of everything. She was so scarred by the experience from going to foster home to foster home, she is more of a shell of a person. She is afraid to love the people in her life. She shuts down. And the fact that she can't imagine her childhood makes it worse.
Brett, her live in boyfriend of 4 years loves her with his full heart and soul. Tory takes advantage of him, in which most men would tell her to hit the road. But Brett knows he is her soul mate. He can't bear to have her out of his life.
Tory starts to have nightmares due to a picture she takes as a photographer. Her memories are starting to overetake her to the point of madness and Brett is the only one who can keep her sane.
This story would be perfect as a television drama and Sala has written two sympathetic characters in Tory and Brett. Some may thinkg Brett is too perfect, but overall he is suitable to counteract Tory.
Tory's emotional journey to find out what happened to her over twenty years ago comes to ahead, but she finally faces her demons and her past.
A wonderful love story and a hero that any woman would want. Both teens and adults can appreciate this story.

Katiebabs

Luckily I have the week off for Christmas because I started reading this book this morning and couldn't put it down until it was finished. This is my first book by Sharon Sala and it won't be my last. Tory and Brett and incredible and the nature of the story is heart wrenching. I will definetly pass this book on to my friends.