Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fun, exciting read, February 11, 2007
This review is from: Tongue In Chic (Mass Market Paperback)
I enjoyed Tongue in Chic more than Dodd's last several contemporary books but you have to go into it ready to have fun. If you're looking for a dark suspense type book. This one isn't for you.
If you like a tough, driven, slightly brooding hero with hidden depths of gold and a spunky, hard-to-resist heroine who brings light and fun to his (and everyone else's) life - then this book has what you want!
It is well written and both main characters are engaging and enjoyable in their own way. The conclusion where all the different threads of the story come together at the end of the book is a little fast but I highly recommend this book!
Fans of Lori Foster will enjoy this book!
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21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Tongues Down, February 16, 2007
This review is from: Tongue In Chic (Mass Market Paperback)
This is a classic opposites-attract story in which Meadow Szarvas, a casual, down-to-earth artist falls for Devlin Fitzwilliam, a wealthy self-made CEO. Most of the story takes place at a mansion in Amelia Shores that has been newly converted into a hotel, owned by Devlin, natch.
I have some small and large problems with Tongue In Chic. First the small problems: What is with the lame play-on-words title that in no way relates to the story and doesn't make sense on its own? And who is the elegantly dressed woman on the cover? Meadow doesn't wear an evening gown in even a single scene. Between the title and the cover, it seems as if the publisher is attempting to mislead readers in some way, and I have no idea why.
Anyway, my real problems with Tongue In Chic concern the contents of the book. The writing style is choppy and lacks transitions. The story does not flow smoothly from scene to scene. For example, in the first scene, Devlin is described as "Mr. Arrogant" and as a "stern-faced, hawk-nosed interrogator." One page later, he is gazing soulfully into Meadow's eyes and calling her his "darling" and his "wife". When I re-read pages to find what I missed, I discovered that I didn't miss anything - the transitions simply weren't there. Dodd's writing technique in this contemporary romance is a departure from her writing in her historical romances (of which I am a fan). Apparently, I will have to stick with her historical romances.
My other main problem with the book is that so much of it required a suspension of disbelief. I should have expected some unbelievable aspects when the premise of the book involves a heroine who claims to have amnesia and a hero who claims that she is his wife. I think that Dodd is a skillful enough writer to make the premise more believable, but here again she cut corners so that it just didn't work.
On the whole, it's a thumbs down. Or should I say tongues down?
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Pleasant Read But Could Have Been Much More, March 3, 2007
This review is from: Tongue In Chic (Mass Market Paperback)
I liked this story; it was a light, quick, fun read. But after I finished it I did give it a little more thought and realized that my overall impression of it was disappointment. Not in the characters themselves or in the plot, but with the undeveloped potential involving the secondary characters and their subplots that was allowed to languish. The behavioral inconsistencies of the main characters caused me to raise an eyebrow every now and then, but didn't bother me as much as finishing the book and wishing the author had taken the time to flesh out a lot of other interesting bits.
I don't know, perhaps it was due to contractual limits on the page number, but there was a lot in this book that could have been better developed that, I think, would have really made this a stand-out romance.
Ms. Dodd created a number of interesting secondary characters, but didn't take them that extra step. The voice of the book was basically that of either Meadow or Devlin, yet I would have really loved to have read more scenes from the secondary characters' points of view, more scenes rounding them out as characters in their own right because they seemed to be more than just stereotypes. There were more subplots than are usually found in a standard romance: Meadow's mother's battle with cancer, the embittered life of Bradley Benjamin, the wasted life of Four Benjamin, Grace Fitzwilliam's celebrity status and emotional distance, the business that Meadow apparently left to run itself, and Judith's insane desire for recognition. I think it would have really kicked this book up out of the ordinary if the story had more of a touch of the epic about it. The material was there to use, it just wasn't developed.
I don't usually mentally re-write books after I read them, but this was one that I did.
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