Customer Reviews

The Widow

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Aristide Pompasse is a renowned artist. He paints stunning portraits and collects young mistresses as his muse. It is harder to tell which is greater, his talent or his ego. Pompasse has done many despicable things in his life, few things that he regrets. The only thing he truly regrets, however, is letting his young wife, escape. He regrets it not because of his deep love for her, but because he has never found anyone who can inspire him to create the way she did. Pompasse dies and now Charlie Thomas, his widow, must come home to close his estates and face her own ghosts.

Charlie married Pompasse when she was seventeen to his sixty something. He'd been everything to her. He was her father, protector, someone who needed her. He provided the one thing she craved the most. A home and stability she had never had. Five years later after being immortalized in a series of paintings, Charlie realized Pompasse owned her body and her soul. It was time to leave and try to find the person she was.

Returning is as hard as Charlie thought it would be. Even though Pompasse is dead, he stills controls and manipulates the lives of people around him. Charlie has to contend with the malicious behavior of Gia, the mistress that took her place. Also in the picture is Connor Maguire, a journalist who was once respectable, but now burnt out and working for a tabloid. Maguire is posing as an insurance investigator trying to find the goods to write an expose on Pompasse.

There were several things I liked about this book. Most notably was the relationship between Charlie and Maguire. But, there were several things I did not like. I personally found the character of Pompasse repulsive which is probably the way the author intended. I had trouble dealing with the fact Pompasse; a man in his seventies usually had mistresses around the age of seventeen. The second thing I had trouble with was the fact that Charlie was engaged to man twice her age. I mean you get rid of a controlling manipulative husband three times your age then get engaged to someone twice your age? Yes, I understand the author was trying to show a pattern, but it was still repulsive to me.

I guess my final thoughts are if you want something different, this book definitely fits the bill. Yes, it is intriguing in way. Maguire starts out as slime and become likeable as a leading man, Charlie works through emotional problems and becomes a likeable leading lady. For me, however, I found the thought of Pompasse and his young mistresses repulsive enough that it took away from the book. Read at your own risk.

The Widow by Anne Stuart is superb. Romantic suspense at its finest.

Aristide Pompasse was the world's greatest artist. He is renowned for his fabulous portraits all of which are worth millions. He is also notorious for having young mistresses. All of them reside at his estate. He allows no one to escape from his Tuscan villa. That is, until his young wife flees.

Charlotte Thomas is the much younger, former wife of Aristide. She flees him and settles in Manhattan. For five years, she has been desperately trying to recapture her life - her soul. Hearing of her former husband's death sets into motion a series of events that changes her life.

She is called back to Aristide's villa to settle his estate. Once there she encounters his formers mistresses and a mysterious man, Connor Maguire.

Connor passes himself off as an insurance consultant. What he is really after is the biggest story of his life - the murder of world famous artist Aristide Pompasse. He is a reporter for the tabloid, THE STARLIGHT. He is there at the estate searching for Pompasse's diaries, hoping to find more skeletons carefully kept hidden. What he does find is a rumor of murder, missing masterpieces and of course, the artist's former wife and muse - Charlie.

Charlie is cool, calm and controlled. An ice princess and the kind of woman that had never appealed to him. So why can't he keep his eyes and hands off of her? What is he so drawn to her?

Amidst this temptation, danger awaits! Someone very calculating and dangerous is residing at the villa. Who hated Pompasse enough to kill? Everyone seems to have a motive . . .

This is a highly recommended book. Ms. Stuart's carefully penned words set Pompasse up as the bad guy; a lecherous old man who had a weakness for seventeen year old girls and for controlling everything in his atmosphere. Blend in murder, betrayal and yes, DESIRE. Mix it all together and you have got on heck of an exciting read.

The Widow is both a romance and a mystery. What made it a special book was the relationship between Charlie and Maguire, watching each of them change through their relationship. The painter Pompasse is murdered and there are several suspects. Charlie was married to him and returns to their home, to see his funeral. Maguire is there to cover the painter's life, his scandals and his women.

I liked The Widow because it was so different. I liked the relationship between Maguire and Charlie. I liked trying to figure out who killed Pompasse. The location, the characters are all very interesting.

I found I had to read the book slowly to understand the true development and change of the relationship between Maguire and Charlie. Maguire seemed like a shallow person, until you really saw where his feelings came from. Charlie is hard to understand until you realize she really never had a father. Perhaps she was looking for him in her men. Maguire will change that. Enjoy this book for both the romance and the mystery.

In his Florence apartment, someone murders renowned philandering portrait artist Aristide Pompasse. The body is discovered by tabloid reporter Connor Maguire who planned to write a tell all book about the infamous artist. Upon learning about his death, Aristide's wife Charlie returns from New York City, where she had started a fresh life without her domineering spouse five years ago, to her husband's Tuscan, France villa. Now she just wants to bury her memories of him by shutting down the estate quickly and re-crossing the Atlantic.

However, before she can attain some peace, Charlie must contend with her husband's slew of mistresses all claiming a piece of the estate. Worse is Maguire who obviously wants something from the widow. As they yell at one another while together looking for Aristide's missing paintings, the danger and the passion mount.

The story line of THE WIDOW emphasizes the romance much more so than the suspense until very late in the tale. The war of words between the lead protagonists is fun to watch as they are an engaging duo who seem both right and wrong for one another. However, anyone expecting a terse suspense-laden tale will be disappointed in Anne Stuart's latest novel. Those readers who relish a powerful love story with torrid passion and a dab of action will fully enjoy THE WIDOW.

Harriet Klausner

The Widow by Anne Stuart

I like Anne Stuart's stuff. She writes a lot of different genres and I've hardly ever failed to be entertained by her writing.

However, The Widow, misses the mark and comes in at just around average.

It's not a hard book to get into. Ms. Stuart starts out with a murder and it goes from there. My problem was I had a really difficult time feeling sorry for the victim. The 73 yr. old Pompasse is a great `artiste' but with a penchant for prepubescent models who he usually lured to his bed. As far as I was concerned a profligate child-molester had gotten his and good riddance. So I didn't have much of an emotional investment in finding out who the killer was. But, since I like Anne Stuart, I kept reading anyway. (G).

The heroine, 30 year old American Charlie (Charlotte) Thomas, was once married to Pompasse, but managed to escape him five years before. They are now divorced and she is living in Manhattan where she has reinvented herself as a fairly successful restaurateur. Australian Conor Maguire, our hero and a tabloid reporter, poses as an insurance adjuster to gain access to Pompasse's Tuscan estate, La Columbala. He's hoping to dig up all the dirt on Pompasse, Charlie, Pompasse's harem of models and write a book that will make him a load of dough. Doesn't much care who he has to sleep with to get it either. He's a fallen hero. A burnt out war correspondent who, after his friend/mentor/lover is blown to bits before his eyes, just can't take it any more. Maguire is not my kind of hero, but I found myself (kicking and screaming all the while) liking him anyway.

They reminded me immediately of a slightly younger Meg Ryan, (serious mode, not perky) and Maguire was Russell Crowe distilled into print. Charlie is supposed to be vulnerable, but her façade was just too cool and I thought too distancing. I like characters I can identify with, or at least understand. Charlie had simply frozen all her emotions and it was difficult to get close to her.

It's not a stretch to figure out who the killer is since there's a limited number of characters and what you've got here, for all intents and purposes, is a cozy. Still, it was a relaxing summer read. Pleasant, but not earth shattering.

Astride Pompasse was a famous painter from Tuscany. Charlie was his child bride, his favorite model, his inspiration. Charlie eventually leaves Pompasse, due to her disenchantment with him, and her own growing lack of self respect. Pompasse had many vices, and one of them causes his murder.

Connor Maguire is a burnt out war correspondent. Due to his wishes for escape from a career that took too much from him, he becomes a reporter for a scandal magazine, THE STARLIGHT. His new career will send him to cover the murder of Pompasse, and the women who have surrounded the famous painter, including Charlie. He will go to Tuscany undercover, and meet Charlie on her return for Pompasse's funeral.

As sparks fly between Charlie and Connor, they will fight a mutual attraction, as well as try to solve the mystery of the murdered Pompasse. Due to the painter's desire to be surrounded by very young, attractive women, there will be several suspects to choose from. Charlie's mother, Pompasse's latest model, and even some of his now older, previous models will all be suspect.

For me, the strongest part of THE WIDOW is the personification of the two leads, the tension between them, and a very sexy consumation. The supporting cast is interesting, but I was really caught up in the drama between Charlie and Connor. By the end of the book, I really felt like I knew them.

The weakest part of the book, for me, was the mystery. Aristride Pompasse, most of the supporting cast are so unlikeable, that I didn't really care who the killer was. For that reason alone, I would have given THE WIDOW 4 1/2 stars, instead of 5.

Connor is not one of Anne Stuart's darker heroes, but he is a charmer. I would read this book again, just to read about him. (But, I do want to read about those dark heroes again, too.)

A few plot glitches made this book really hard for me to get into. The hero, Maguire, is a former war reporter who got burned out and started working for a tabloid. His latest assignment is to write an expose, which he hopes to turn into a book, about Aristide Pompasse, the famous artist.

Since when do tabloids pay attention to artists? Since when do hack reporters, let alone hack reporters with a background in war journalism, write artist monographs? In my experience, there isn't a lot of mingling between art critics and biographers and popular journalism; nor does Maguire have the kind of background that would allow him to write even a halfway competent biography of a contemporary artist.

Not only that, he sneaks into the artist's villa posing as an insurance adjuster and nobody stops to ask him - which insurance company? If you have millions of dollars worth of art in your home, and you pay through the nose for insurance (appraisal costs about 15% of the artwork, so we are talking huge sums of money) you will know the name of your insurance company, and your insurance company will be very, very communicative about who they are sending to your home, and why, and when. Random people walking into your house and saying that the government (?) sent them to dig through your cabinets looking for missing diaries are not going to get very far.

Plus, the kind of art that Pompasse makes - realistic portraits of his mistresses, mostly - just wouldn't make an artist famous these days. It's like Stuart thinks she can write a contemporary-set novel in which all of modern art never happened. Frustrating.

I was annoyed by some of the secondary characters - Charlie's mom Olivia, for example, would have been wonderful but she is too sketchy, and almost all her lines sound more like something a psychiatrist would say about her than something she would say herself. And Charlie's fiance, Henry, is cartoonishly repulsive - I presume so that the reader doesn't feel bad as Charlie falls in love with somebody else.

I wished that the romance had been better developed. Once it got going, I found a lot about their relationship really compelling. Maguire's character is wonderful; his experiences as a war reporter have really shaped his character - he is not self-indulgent or careless with people, but he is wounded. Charlie was also damaged in the name of a higher ideal - because she believed in Pompasse's genius, she put up with a lot of cruelty from him. It is not easy for either to lower their defenses, to trust, to hope.

But I didn't feel like they really engaged with one another until halfway through the book or so. Before that it's all just minor skirmishing.

I figured out who the murderer was very early on, and that was disappointing. It takes a while for the suspense to kick in.

Charlotte Thomas upon receiving the news of the demise of her husband - the iconic French artist Astride Pompasse in Italy, decides to return back to his Tuscan Villa for his burial after years of seclusion. Never did she expected that the villa is besieged by erstwhile enemies and intruders - the intriguing reporter, Connor Maguire disguising as an insurance investigator, Gia - the spoilt model and Astride's addition of flings, the imperious Madame Antonelle et al. Mayhem enshrouds as Astride's death could be murder - and before Charlotte can finds out, she finds her life threatened...

Ms. Stuart, whose credits include the erotically-charged thriller Moonrise and Shadows at Sunset, shows her forte in judiciously juggling with suspense and romance. Her romance characters are hard-edged yet vulnerable; Charlotte is a fallen angel who is hopelessly tormented by love and kinship with her mother while Conner loses his beloved to the Kosovo War. Their chemistry is explosive as it is cryptic.

It's a pity the suspense and mystery element fuses. Ms. Stuart gives a sepulchral mood of the villa - but in her manipulation of the characters, she has betrayed who the murderer is - and the sabotage is too meek to stir much fear. THE WIDOW thus falls short in creating the high-voltage suspense in the thriller. But as a quick read for exciting romance, THE WIDOW can certainly make the mark.

While on a road trip in the wilderness, we had a flat and my husband was...shall we say...less than patient while spending 2 hours changing it on a gravel slope. Thanks to THE WIDOW, I didn't even notice the time passing, the mosquitoes, the sun beating down...I just thought I'd been swept away to a magical villa in Tuscany. The characterizations just sparkle in this one, and I couldn't put the book down as the layers of secrets and lies were slowly peeled away. Fantastic book, I can't recommend it highly enough. I never once said, "Honey, how's that tire change coming along?" and therefore we are as happily-ever-after as Maguire and Charlie.

I love Anne Stuart's books and this one's no exception. Her 'heroes' are always so deliciously anti-heroic yet heroic despite themselves if that makes any sense at all. Dark, romantic and suspenseful they always think they're much worse than they are - and in actual fact, an Anne Stuart hero will always be willing to sacrifice everything in the end for his love. Great book!