Open Season (Mass Market Paperback)

by Linda Howard (Author) "Daisy!..." (more)
Key Phrases: Buffalo Club, Chief Russo, Daisy Minor (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
The Orlando Sentinel

A thriller...with deftness and charm.

Product Description

Be careful what you wish for....

On her thirty-fourth birthday, Daisy Minor decides to make over her entire life. The small-town librarian has had it with her boring clothes, her ordinary looks, and nearly a decade without so much as a date. It's time to get a life -- and a sex life. The perennial good girl, Daisy transforms herself into a party girl extraordinaire -- dancing the night away at clubs, laughing and flirting with abandon -- and she's declared open season for manhunting. But her free-spirited fun turns to shattering danger when she witnesses something she shouldn't -- and becomes the target of a killer. Now, before she can meet the one man who can share her life, first she may need him to save it.

Seamlessly blending heart-pounding romance and breathless intrigue, Linda Howard delivers a stylish and provocative novel that absolutely defies readers to put it down.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Pocket (May 21, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671027581
• ISBN-13: 978-0671027582
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (215 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #82,611 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Standard fare from the queen of romantic suspense., August 9, 2001

By	mirope "mirope" (Seattle, Washington) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Open Season (Hardcover)

If you're a fan of Linda Howard's (and if you're not, you should be), you will find "Open Season" to be a satisfying read even though it doesn't offer anything new. If fact, I thought this book was VERY similar to Howard's "Dream Man" without the psychic elements. But hey, "Dream Man" was a great book, so a repeat isn't completely uncalled for.

The core story is about a small-town librarian, Daisy Minor, who wakes up on her 34th birthday and realizes that her hair is boring, her clothes are boring, her job is boring, she's boring. Not to mention lonely. Daisy decides that if she doesn't want to spend her life alone, she needs to get busy, and the fastest way to get results is to do a complete make-over into a "party" girl. Sure enough, there is a beautiful, sexy woman under all her frowsiness. Before she even starts her transformation, she butts heads with the new police chief, Jack Russo, an apparent fish-out-of-water Yankee in this sleepy southern berg. He's big, he's intimidating, he's rude. He's also very sexy . As Daisy ventures out to strut her new stuff at the local bars, he becomes concerned that she's way too naive to realize when she's attracted the wrong kind of attention. Daisy wants him to get out of her way so she can continue her man hunt. Dane - I mean Jack - decides that he needs to stick close for her own protection. Then he decides that he just needs to stick close. Somewhere along the way there's a crime to solve and Daisy becomes a target for bad guys. Which means, of course, that Daisy and Jack need to have some hot love scenes.

Howard's unique style and humor are evident throughout the book. Daisy's schemes to get the word out that she's available are hysterical, and you will never see colored condoms in the same light. Both of the lead characters are appealing, but Daisy is the more finely drafted of the two. Her ernest attempts to be a party girl are charming. I particularly appreciated that she isn't one of those ninny romantic heroines who has to go do something foolish that she's been warned not to do in order to prove how independent and spirited she is. In fact, when Jack thinks she's left a safe haven he's found for her, she lets him have it. Her response: "I'm safe here; why would I leave? That's what always happens in movies; either the woman or the kid disobeys instructions and does exactly what they've been told not to do, thereby putting both themselves and everyone else in danger. I've always thought that if they were that stupid, then let them die before they have a chance to breed." Hallelujah!

The mystery plot is good, but the romance is better. The secondary characters are well-developed, especially the bad guys. All in all, this is a quick read, but a good one.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Whatever happened to the Linda Howard romance?, July 31, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Open Season (Hardcover)

If you're looking for one of those heart-throbbing romances, typical of the old Linda Howard, you're going to be disappointed with this. Unfortunately, Ms. Howard has been slowly but surely drifting away from her gripping love stories and venturing more toward--well, simply telling a story. Yes, there's a romance here, but it's just a small part of the whole, instead of BEING the whole. I was left in awe when I read Mackenzie's Mountain, truly half in love with Zane when I finished Mackenzie's Pleasure, wistful by the power and strength of Kell Sabin from Diamond Bay . . . . Open Season, however, insomuch as the story was enjoyable, left me with little more than a closed book when I was finished reading. Sorry, Ms. Howard. In fact, I'm one of your biggest fans. But I miss the love in your love stories.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Cute, but lacks the substance of a Linda Howard book, August 2, 2001

By	Geek Girl "Christi" (Birmingham, MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Open Season (Hardcover)

I've probably read every book Linda Howard has written. She's always been one of those authors that I automatically buy without reading about the plot or checking other people's opinion. This was a "cute" story, but it lacked in-depth character development and history. I think she spent the majority of her time trying to write funny or clever passages. I wasn't expecting 336 pages of cute. Actually, the first passage in the book (which is about a Mexican girl of 17 crossing the border illegally to start a new life in the US) is more of what I was expecting. I cared more about this girl than I did about the main character. That's not to say that cute and funny make for a bad book - but it's less than I expect from Linda Howard. If you look at some of her better books (Mackenzie's Mountain, Sara's Child, All the Queen's Men) you will find a lot more to the main characters than you will find in the characters in this book. This book is worth borrowing from someone or waiting for the paperback. It is not worth the hardback price.