Customer Reviews

Waiting for You

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Waiting for You is missing one of Michaels' main ingredients -- sparkling, witty dialogue which creates character development. The 2 main characters are Jack and Meredith who grow up together as the son and ward respectively of an abusive, neglectful father (who manages to construct a Machiavellian plot while being a perpetual drunkard and then suffering from syphillis. Yes, this is a bit hard to believe.) The plot is largely constructed through prose and attempts too much -- the story of the main characters'lives from the ages of 7 and 6 months, the addition of 2 incessently-quoting Shakespearean actors turned nursemaids who then become interfering ghosts, an American Indian friend of Jack's from his 5 year financial-empire building foray into the New World (which is never explicated), a nefarious estate manager, and a secondary character, Kipp, who is in love with Meredith. Michaels needed to edit this book down to the main ingredients, begin it when Jack and Merry are 22 and 17 respectively when the story really begins and construct dialogue to keep the story moving rather than relying on descriptive prose and an excess of tertiary characters. At the end of this book, I did not feel that I knew the characters very well, though I had read a description of much of their lives. This book's secondary character, Kipp, is the main charcter of the sequel, Someone to Love. Even in Waiting to Love, Kipp seems to be the most interesting character. The sequel, therefore, is the much better book: the dialogue is a joy to read, Kipp becomes more complex and yet clear as the story evolves, and even though we are reading a Regency it all seems believable. Buy Someone to Love and read Waiting for You only to learn about Kipp before that book begins.

During the Regency, many members of the Ton sated theirpersonal pleasures at the cost of the estates. Perhaps the mosthedonistic is "Awful" August Coltrane....

WAITING FOR YOUis an entertaining Regency romance that leaves some gaps inunderstanding for the reader to accept. The story line centers on thereactions to the actions of Awful, but his motives seem extreme evenfor a wastrel like him. Why have an heir or accept a ward, if he onlyplans to destroy the estate? Still, Kasey Michaels is such a goodtalent that having the lead charcaters rotate waiting for one anotherfeels like a fresh plot device. Though not her best tale, Ms. Michaelsspins a narrative that will still delight Regency romancereaders. ...END

I totally concur with the reviewer that suggested the book should have started when Jack and Merry were grown up - I almost stopped reading during the long stage-setting. The Shakespearean actors were amusing for a while, but got tiresome. Other characters came and went. My sense is that Ms. Michaels started with a fairly clever mystery and then started hanging characters around it, until it filled up all the pages. It did get better once it was clear there were mysteries (i.e., more than 'boy thinks of girl as his sister and thus can't love her like a woman' which is all it seemed like in the beginning) and the final chapters were engrossing. The romance part was pretty tame, as they had grown up adoring each other, and only very modest deviations in their attentions to others.

Kasey Michaels has written another winner! Jack is a hero with realistic faults that Merry takes delight in pointing out. He manages to be protective without being patronizing. Merry the heroine, possesses all the qualities we wish to see in our heroine,humor, compassion and a bit of stubbornness. I found all of the auxillary characters to have enough depth to make them interesting. The ending is well thought out and twisting enough to make you sit back and go AHHH.(like you knew it all along) All in all, well worth the read.