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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent Story With Unlikeable Characters, March 30, 2007
Dr. Lara Mallory is a fallen woman since a tabloid incident involving her and Senator Clark Tackett. She had been married at the time, and found anything but a forgiving attitude following the scandal. Finally, after Clark Tackett dies and leaves her a medical practice in his home town of Eden Pass, Texas, she decides to start over there. Besides, she believes the Tackett family owes her, and she's in town to collect a favor from Clark's younger brother, notorious playboy Key. Things are even tougher in Eden Pass, however, because Clark's powerful mother, Jody Tackett, has it out for her. Key seems to share his mother's low opinion, as does his mouse of a sister, Janellen, and the rest of the town. Key despises himself for falling for his dead brother's bimbo, but he can't seem to resist her. At the same time, 33-year-old Janellen is finally breaking out of her shell. When an ex-con named Bowie Cato comes in to Tackett Oil looking for a job, there's something compelling about him, and pretty soon Janellen starts restyling her hair and wearing make-up while she and Bowie sneak around to build their romance.
Sandra Brown can write one heck of a gripping thriller, but sometimes her books seem to have somewhat of a hard edge to them, and this is one of those books. It's as if the author was undergoing difficult personal turmoil at the time, and it came out in her writing. The judgmental attitude that pervades this novel seems appropriate for a small town like Eden Pass, but doesn't fit quite so well with the rest of the country, considering that infidelity did not sink the political aspirations of Bill Clinton, and notoriety has become a form of fame. She tosses words like whore, tramp, and trash around quite liberally, which made it difficult to warm to several of the characters. Perhaps it was done on purpose to underscore the hypocrisy inherent in these characters, but it was still somewhat distasteful.
The story was a good one, with a few good twists and turns along the way, but I also was not horribly fond of the ending. She created and fleshed out a couple of characters simply to kill them off at the end, and another rather innocuous character meets a bad end that didn't seem fitting to his actions throughout the book. Aside from those complaints, however, this is a pretty good novel with a compelling storyline. I just think I would have liked it better if everyone within its pages wasn't quite so mean.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ok, so I'm a guy who reads Sandra Brown, January 1, 2005
She's not someone I'd normally read but I figured it might be an interesting experience. My female colleagues teased me about reading this. Someone told me this was "trashy stuff" (which I found out that it means it deserves a X-rated label of sorts -- I guess that's why it's so appealing!). Anyway, I told them that a good "salesman" (I'm a librarian) has to know all his wares, so...
The plot is nothing to shout about. I felt it was the typical "hero gets his girl" romance story, where all the women seem hungry for men, and the men (looks not withstanding) seem to get the women. Hmm... was this book really written for women?
It's entertaining read, really. So I gave it 4-stars. It doesn't set out to be intellectual stuff in the first place, and like any adult Romance novel, it has its fair share of love scenes. All in clean fun, and some love scenes are quite amusing 'cos it's so cliche. A good read for those who want to just lose themselves for a few hours on the train, or before bed.
I can now understand why it's popular among women readers. Heck, men should read such books once in a while.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not a lot of smoke, but an interesting storyline, October 9, 2006
After surviving the media onslaught from a notorious affair and subsequently losing her child and US Ambassador husband while caught up in a Central American military coup, Lara is willed a medical practice by the man everyone accuses her of ruining, Senator Clark Tackett, who took his own life.
His estranged brother Key is injured and requires the attention of a doctor and finds himself attracted to Lara, only to be warned off by his mother who cherishes the memory of her fallen son and vows to rid their Texas town of the harlot that caused his downfall. As Key grapples with his feelings for a woman he should hate, he tries to reconcile what he has heard about her verses what he has observed, and is not real interested in his brother's sloppy seconds. While she never denies the affair with Clark, she is not willing to discuss it either. When she asks for his help to retrieve her daughter's remains, Key reluctantly agrees and the two embark on a journey that will alter both their lives.
Savvy readers will be able to predict the path that the story will take, so for the most part, the suspense is light, though there are a couple twists that you won't see coming. The secondary romance between Key's spinster sister and a crusty ranch hand adds much needed heart to the story. While not a standout in Brown's lengthy body of work, "Smoke" is an interesting story, marking her transition from genre romance to romantic suspense.
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