Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing read from an author I can usually count on, July 20, 2008
I'm blown away by all the five star ratings this book has received. There are certain authors I can usually count on to give me a good read. Jude Deveraux, Judith McNaught, Lavyrle Spencer, Lesa Kleypas, Teresa Medeiros, and Julie Garwood are a few. It's true that I haven't had much time to read lately, so maybe when I picked up a new book from a "favorite," my expectations were too high. Or maybe I haven't read any Jude Deveraux books lately and my tastes have changed. The biggest surprise was that I didn't feel drawn in during ANY part of the book.
I was annoyed by the way the three women would talk about each of their lives in response to something one of the other women would say. It made it hard to follow. I understand that the author was giving the reader more background, but it reminded me of a person who always make another person's tragedy about herself, or a person who always turns a conversation to her own life when it's not appropriate. This made the characters less likeable. Although, I suppose this self-involvement trend did kind of continue in the 18th century when each wasn't exactly caring how the other two were doing.
The reason I'm compelled to write a lukewarm review about this book (I've never written a review before) is because I didn't feel drawn-in during ANY part of it, and I'm not used to that from an author I can usually count on. I may need to revisit one of Jude Deveraux's books that I enjoyed to see if she has changed or I have changed.
Lena
SPOILER ALERT:
I also agree with a review another person wrote that said we weren't able to get to know any of the male characters. And they all end up with different men in the end than those we did get to know?!? Sorry, but the fact that each of the men they end up with is a descendant of those we got to know (at least, for Amy and Zoe) does not count. They are different people. And did anyone else have a problem with the fact that Amy and Zoe changed things so that they were distantly related to their husbands by setting up their 18th century men with their own ancestors? I guess it was supposed to give us comfort in the fact that the men they left behind weren't left completely heartbroken. It added ick factor, if anything.
The other thing I found incongruous is the way everyone seemed to "know" things. Amy just knew there was more to Faith's relationship with Ty. She knew that Faith and Zoe were supposed to come with her. She knew how to run the house. Everyone in the 18th century knew they'd be leaving soon. Tristan knew he and Amy were meant to be together (even though they don't end up together). Russell knew he and Zoe were meant to be together (even though they don't end up together). It was annoying, who likes a know-it-all?
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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Trouble in JudeLand, August 17, 2008
They say there are only so many stories to be told. Certainly in the romance genre, one expects an author as prolific as Jude Deveraux to return to the same well more than once.
Deveraux has set up CAMP next to the well, with a stand selling bottled well water.
Here are two things I wish she'd stop already:
1. Mystery plots. Deveraux is a romance novelist--period. She cannot construct a solid mystery, and the solution always involves some garbage she makes up in the end that no one ever could have surmised from the story. That's like playing Hangman where you make up your own words. She likes to drop coy mentions via her "writer" heroines about how novelists usually don't know what will happen to their characters ahead of time. Yeah, obviously, Jude.
2. Time travel. This really has not worked since "Knight in Shining Armor" and "Wishes," where the plot was linear. This convoluted mess where the heroine goes back in time and lives the reality of someone else who IS her, but ISN'T her, but may be RELATED to her, is a headache.
Does anyone else remember when her books actually had sex scenes? And whole plots about falling in love? That's what I want to read, and not this midlife crisis wish fulfillment that I suspect is the author practicing self-therapy. (A third thing I wish she'd stop is intrusively injecting herself into her books.)
Deveraux borrows liberally and shamelessly not only from her other books, but among storylines within the same series. Two of six heroines in Summerhouse nursed a chronically ill husband while being abused by his thankless parents. Three hooked up with men who were too rich to be an "appropriate" match. (Not just rich. Unbelievably, shockingly rich, with access to limitless funds.) Two played the obsessively devoted wife and mother. Most of them discover that they are talented--prodigiously so--in artistic endeavors they have never tried before, and for which there's no precedent.
The author does attempt to break the mold with the "Goth girl," Zoe, but then fails to flesh out the character and follow through. In fact, all of her characters talk and act the same way once she's introduced them by way of a few stereotypes. Occasionally she'll remind you of their archetype by having them bake muffins or something.
**Spoilers ahead.**
Then there are all the dropped plot threads. How did Amy resolve her personal tragedy that was introduced in Chapter One? Why didn't Faith and Zoe ever get business cards after the significance was underscored? (And couldn't Deveraux have been a little more...writerly about the complicity of Jeanne and Madame Zoya, instead of lobbing it at the reader in one contrived lump?) Madame Zoya's "rules for time travel" are all over the place, and Deveraux does a clumsy job of blending them into the dialogue.
Another reviewer mentioned that the characters tend to interrupt each others' stories and turn the subject to themselves. They sure do, and it makes them all annoying. Not *all* the exposition has to happen as a conversation over various lobster salads and blueberry desserts.
Here's what Jude Deveraux still does well: Picturesque descriptions of other time periods. Clothes, food, shopping, and decor, all of which appeal to women's fantasies. The woman who sweeps in and capably "fixes it all," winning her hero's adoration.
For those reasons, I probably could have forgiven her, until I read that trite stink-bomb of an ending. Once again she does a crash conclusion and crams 50 percent of the story into the final chapters, leaving the reader dazed and betrayed. How the hell did all THAT happen?
A good friend tells you what you need to hear, even when you don't want to hear it. So does a good editor, and Jude Deveraux needs one--that is, if she wants to be great again and not keep banking on her (decidedly) former glory.
Give us back to the Montgomerys and the historical romance formula. It's what made you.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not as good, July 24, 2008
Jude Deveraux wrote such a wonderful surprise of a novel in "Summerhouse" that I was eagerly awaiting a sequel. But if you're hoping for a sequel that is as good as the original, this is not it. The only thing similar is that the characters go to the summerhouse. There is some time travel, but there are no characters that are as loveable as in the original story and a lot more casual love-making. This sequel was a big disappointment to me.
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