This one was so slow to get started! It needed either more fleshing out to make it more engaging in the first half or to be trimmed down.
Trimming down would probably be preferable! As it is, you're waiting for something to happen for the book to take a definite direction for far too long.
When things finally get moving, it's okayish, but certainly not one of the author's best novels,
Random Thoughts:
I find it amusing that this author clearly considered herself very "with it" and feminist, and yet her writing has some painfully cringeworthy sexist stereotypes.
The way she describes one female character in particular, in this book, is just, . . Wow!
The main character is a woman named "Haskell", A bit odd, and yes, I know I have a nerve to say so, since I'm a female Michael, . . But I acknowledge that my name is rather odd, too,
I realize she "had" to do it to get the story going in its intended direction, and ultimately you understand why, but it seemed very strange to me that Haskell breaks off her engagement simply because she suspects that the man she thought was her father but who she had never even met wasn't her biological dad.
I get that it might be startling and make you want to investigate and locate your biological father, but it's a weird reason to call off an engagement! She treats Jon poorly throughout the book, really.
It will never cease to be gross and yucky and utterly unappealing when male characters with a romantic interest in female characters call them "child", "kid", or otherwise refer to them as being childlike.
"Oh, Haskell You are so damned young"
It always rubs me the wrong way when an author makes irritating "asides", observations, or excuses about how a character has said something that's grammatically incorrect.
Argh! We know you know how to "write good", okay Give it a rest!! Let the characters speak naturally, please! Stop berating them for the words you put in their mouths and drawing undue attention to the fact that everyday speech is frequently not grammatically correct.
We already know that,
One example:
"What do you want to know that for"
"Your grammar is as befuddled as your reasoning," Dave said cuttingly.
Twice near the end, Haskell thinks something to the effect that cigarette smoke smells nice, My personal favorite "I lay still, savoring the beautiful gray light and the exquisite aroma of cigarette smoke that permeated the sheets, " This was published in, so yes, cigarette smoking was more common than it is now, but even back then, didn't most people think cigarette smoke reeked If not, it was probably only because they were smokers themselves and were noseblind to it.
I don't know I'm just not buying this love for the socalled "aroma" of cigarette smoke, Then again, I suppose we can sometimes enjoy/appreciate objectively stinky smells simply because we associate them with someone we love,
I wasn't sure who Haskell's father would be, to tell the truth, There are a handful of equally plausible possibilities, and by the time it was revealed, I just kind of shrugged, . . "Yep. That was one of the possibilities I considered, She sure did find out who her bio dad is, yawn"
I was similarly uncertain of how the romance aspect of the book would work out, until fairly near the end, It was a bit out of the blue, It felt like she was steering us in a different direction for most of the book, . . Then you could tell that was a nogo, and she suddenly changed tack, which is something I don't particularly like in romances, I want a chance to root for a pairing, not have two or three kind of "meh" options and no clue about where things are headed.
So yes, this was slightly disorienting, but unlike some other readers, I found the last part of the book where the romance is resolved generally more entertaining to read than much of the rest of it.
I might have liked the book better if more pages had been devoted to the romance instead of the dull, plodding mystery/who'sthedaddy storyline!
I was disappointed by the lack of exciting treasurehunting and sorting through artifacts.
I guess I should've known that wouldn't materialize, because it would be difficult to write in an interesting way without distracting from the rest of the book, but still.
. . I felt let down.
There was very much less of the paranormal than I expected, Some of this author's novels lean heavily on the supernatural, and for some reason I thought this one might, as well, I wasn't so much disappointed as mildly surprised by the lack,
Conclusion: It took me a while to work my way through this book, and I wouldn't recommend it unless you're already a fan.
I think I've always found her works annoying in some ways, but I think I used to enjoy them more than I do now.
At this point, it seems likely that either I'm pickier now or I'm remembering liking some of her other novels better than I actually did.
I can't believe I just happened to read all the better ones first, I couldn't finish this one either, I skipped to the end to get a small taste of what happens, It just was just taking too long to progress for me, I feel like a failure for not finishing, but I knew if I didn't make a decision, I would never move on, A young girls tries to find her real father
Flüssig geschrieben und gerade am Anfang sehr gut zu lesen, Die Beziehung von Jessie und Haskell, deren Wunsch, die Vergangenheit zu klären, . . alles sehr glaubhaft mit gut beschriebenen Charakteren, Im Mittelteil wird es dann etwas langfädiger, aber nicht fad, Aber es hätte hier durchaus ein paar Seiten weniger gebraucht, Die Auflösung ist spannend und teils unerwartet, Der Schluss, der die private Entscheidung von Haskell beschreibt, jedoch ist, . . auf Englisch wäre es wohl "cheesy", Kitschig. Tut dem ganzen an sich keinen Abbruch, ist aber schade und irgendwie peinlich, Echt unglaubhaft, aus dem Nichts kommend, schmalzig und einfach lachhaft : Amazingly, this is the first Barbara Michaels Ive ever read, It was a good pageturner, and the mystery was satisfyingly atmospheric in its gothicness and twisty with its misdirection, The romance, however, felt sort of tackedon at the end, I was pleased to have a romance with an intentionally unlikeable heroine, for a change, Shes rude and selfish, snide towards all other women, and feels very little sense of guilt over neglecting her relations, She also does not hesitate to use any tools available to her to achieve her own ends, including people, But of course, she is also beautiful and unaware of it, feeling that her dark coloring makes her unattractive in comparison to her fairskinned and fairhaired mother.
This makes pretty much every man she encounters willing to walk over fire to help her.
I read this for theRomance Bingo, It fits the Gothic Romance square, as it has most of the elements of gothic literature, except the usual supernatural one, if you discount several characters who seem to have almost psychic thought connection or leaps of intuition.
Very, very dated in its treatment of gender roles and dynamicslots of the sassy, "feminist" character being bossed around and coddled by men, I'm not surprised, since this was originally published more thanyears ago, and because I've read quite a few others by this author, It's been a long time since I've read one that I could rate higher than this, though, and I'm starting to wonder whether that has more to do with my changing reading tastes than it does the books themselves.
I think maybe I have less patience for how dated it is than I did when I was in my twenties,
That said, in the grand scheme of trying to get through the entire Barbara Michaels catalogue, this was a pretty good read.
It had a bit of a slow startnot uninteresting, but a little meanderingbut sometime after pageI really got into it, The bits of the mystery were fun to follow, and I was very interested in the resolution of it, I can't say
that I guessed it, but I wasn't surprised at how it ended up, It's one of those books that leaves so many options open that you could hardly be surprised at any of them, Probably, I would have rated itif not for a little bit tacked on at the end, re: romance, Spoilers below, if you care,
I'm not mad I read this unlike some others of hers,that I could probably be persuaded to bump to,if I was feeling generous, .
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