Customer Reviews

The Thing About Men

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

 

 

Reviews of this book promised a light, humorous romance in the genre of Susan Elizabeth Phillips or Susan Anderson. Instead it is overwritten, with far too much exposition. I found myself desperate for a few lines of dialog, even when it was badly written and failed to advance the story. On the plus side, Bevarly is fairly adept with character creation; I liked Ramsey Sage. Claire, on the other hand, had little going for her, in my opinion. Basically, she's a phony. Front woman for a Martha Stewart-like TV show and magazine--the concept of her friend, Olive-- Claire seems to have no real skills and not much personality. I liked Olive a bit better but her situation was overblown; it was a little hard to believe anyone would seriously still be searching for this woman after 25 years. Her romance with the social worker had promise, I thought--as did he, whose story is touched on but never really developed--but it went nowhere. We are just told, at the end, what happened to them. Also, the baby who brought the couples together in the first place is largely overlooked except for being described as destructive beyond belief. I had to wonder how much experience the author actually has with children, since she insisted that a 13-month-old child could do all the damage the author assigns to her.

Bevarly has some skill as a writer but her over developed narrative and exposition bogs the story WAAAYYYYY down. About 100 pages in, I lost patience and skipped my way to the end.

Romance authors who manage to build a fanbase sell millions of books; why is it they suffer so from bad or absent editing? Publishers apparently believe the romance-novel audience either doesn't recognize bad writing or doesn't care about it. Wrong. We recognize it and we care about it. With a good editor, this book by Bevarly could have been much better--in this reader/writer's opinion.

I love Elizabeth Bevarly's books and have given them great reviews in the past, but this one seems to be a parody of her style.

The story is lots of fun. The hero is wonderful. The problem is that she uses her style of interrupting introspection with cute little asides--well, you know what I mean. She does this far too often. Should have used a FIND and cut out at least half of them. All her novels are beginning to sound the same and that gets old after a while--and in this one, just too much.

One other problem is that three of her characters have a great deal of unpleasant baggage which Ms. Bevarly handles very well. Unfortunatley, she has to give the secondary male baggage, too. His problem is dropped into the end of the story and completely unneccessary. It would have been nice to have one normal person here.

If you haven't read Elizabeth Bevarly before, you'll enjoy this novel. It's just when you've read her most recent ones that you notice she's not fresh anymore.

Claire Willoughby is a lifestyle guru in the same vein as Martha Stewart. Except this guru is nothing more than a figurehead - in reality, she does not know how to cook and those great crafts are produced by her staff.

After her #1 fan is killed in a car accident, Claire discovers that she has "inherited" the woman's child. She knows less about children than she does about crafts, but she takes the kid in until the long-absent can be found.

Enter Ramsey Sage, 100% pure all-American beefcake. From the barb wire tattoo, tight jeans, Harley, and ripped t-shirts, he is not what Claire expected as the prospective guardian to this child. She is completely attracted to him, but decides to keep custody until Ramsey can prove that he is not a deadbeat. Ramsey tells her that he will do anything to get baby Annabel, even if it means getting closer to uptight Claire. But will he go as far as to divulge her secret? Turns out Ramsey has plenty of secrets of his own.

The story is cute, and has a little too much narrative. Although, the narrative and introspection can be downright hilarious at times, it can also be tedious and bog down the story. But it captured my attention and I loved the way that the characters in the end got exactly what they deserved. It is a really funny and quick read.

But still a lot of fun. Claire and Ramsey are both in keeping with Bevarly's strong characterization and their dialogue kept me chuckling. And the subplot with Olive and Davis though much more serious was really good. As always I closed the book with a smile. Definitely recommended.

A very fun book! This story was witty, engaging, fast-paced, and a whole lot of fun. I enjoy how this author makes her sub-plots and characters as wonderful as the main characters; it's like getting two stories in one. Recommended!

I'm a fan of Elizabeth Bevarly but this book was just not my cup of tea. I felt like the reviewer who couldn't finish it, except that once I've invested time, I hate to put a book aside. On the positive side, the hero (Ramsey Sage) I liked very much. (He's the typical, long-haired bad-boy). I was never invested at ALL in Claire (his love interest). She seemed kind of blah and milque-toast-y. The parallel love story between Claire's best friend, Olive and Davis Webster (a male social worker) also did NOT work for me at all, mostly because of the description of Webster. He dresses like a circus clown (in Hawaiian shirts and red high-top sneakers)--not my idea of a hottie, no matter how much his face is sculpted. Plus, the WHOLE ENTIRE BOOK is made up of one secret after another. Everyone is keeping a secret (some of which are too serious for light reading, like being in the witness protection program). I'm always concerned when I pick up a book and the reviews say something like, "Praise about (insert author's name", which this book did on the front cover. That's sort of the kiss of death--like she's a good writer, but this one is not good enough to say anything GOOD about. Anyway ... I still like her writing and will, no doubt, read her future offerings but this one really fell short for me.

I got to page 106 and had to quit reading. I got so tired of reading the same thing over and over again. In one paragraph she mentions three times about him living in Central America. That got very old, fast!

I'm giving it two stars and not one because I hope to pick it back up someday and not find it so monotonous because I did like the main male character and the storyline.

This was my first book by Elizabeth Bevarly and I enjoyed very much. There was a good mixture of humor and seriousness, and both stories complemented each other nicely. I intend to look for more books by this author.

I seem to recall that Elizabeth Bevarly wrote category books that were less than memorable. She certainly doesn't spring to mind when thinking about the cateorgy stuff I've encountered over the last 15-20 years. However she seems to have started producing more light-hearted, chic-lit style stuff whilst out of my line of sight.

I'm giving this 4 stars although I see that others have had very divergent opinions and my reason for doing this is that I have nothing to compare it with in her current output. So, for me, the jury is out on whether she is really capable of putting out some amusing and clever books. If, indeed, she is to be compared with Susan Andersen, then I'll give the benefit of the doubt until I've read some of her other recent work.

What appealed to me in this story was the hero - Ramsey Sage wasn't the usual sort of "new man" although that's exactly what he is. I liked his rough and ready attitude, his shambolic appearance and his very high moral standards. A sexy beast indeed but one wanting very much to be tamed. I loved it that of all the cars in the world he chose a Volvo estate car - typically middle-class, "home counties" as they say in England and totally unexpected; it carried some real symbolic implications! The secondary story was acceptable and the villain lawyer of the piece was an oily creep - loved it that he wound up selling shoes in Wal-Mart somewhere in deepest Missouri - revenge being best when cleverly dished out!

I'll look for something else by Elizabeth Bevarly to see if this book is the gold standard or, indeed, she has something better out there.

This book was just on the ok side. It had way way way to much discription and not enough dialogue. I kept reading and reading waiting to hear the characters say something anything to anyone. It was to far between for my liking.
The characters are good. the male characters are very intresting, but I do not think that the Author explored the relationships with each character enough.
The end of the book left me wanting more of the story that seems to have been skipped.
If you are into discriptive books this is the one for you, if not stay away or be prepared to skim many pages.