JeannineDVE2

LAST BREATH
By Mariah Stewart
Ballantine Books
ISN 978-0-345-49224-1
Suspense
4 artifacts

Daria McGowan, an archeologist, is on a dig in the Near East when she receives an urgent FAX from Dr. Louise Burnette of Howe University. Dr. Burnette plans to re-open the university museum and display artifacts that were collected by Daria's great-grandfather but have never been exhibited for they had been stored for over a century. She wants Daria to take charge of the showing of her great-grandfather's collection. Daria agrees to leave the site where she has been working and head back to the U.S. to discuss this with Dr. Burnette. On her way back to the U.S. Daria meets Connor Shields, a man she had once had dinner with and had not seen again due to their various jobs. They dine together and are attracted to each other. Connor tells Daria he is with the FBI after she tells him about her missing brother. He tells her he might be able to help and gives her his card, telling her to call him at any time.

Back in the U.S. Daria meets Dr. Burnette and suggests she look over her great-grandfather's archeological findings of the lost city of Shandihar in order to decide if she, indeed, wishes to work for the university and museum. Upon comparing the invoice with the artifacts, Daria finds that several important pieces are missing. According to Dr. Burnette, everything has been stored away and under lock and key since her grandfather left the priceless things there. He was to have had an exhibit but another took place first, and then he died. No one had been near the crates in years. His finding of the artifacts of Shandihar has been almost forgotten.
Daria phones Conner and tells him about the thefts. It's not his type of case, but he had been on leave for a few days, had nothing better to do and welcomed the idea of seeing her again, so he travels to Pennsylvania and meets with Daria. He agrees to help her try to find some of the missing items. They track down several people who evidently have acquired some of the items. When they fine someone who has possession of one of the missing pieces, they discover that person has been murdered in a gruesome and ritualistic way. Together, they as well as the police and FBI try to discover who the killer is as well as why after so long a period, this is happening. Along the way, Daria becomes a target in this web of intrigue.

LAST BREATH is rather slow moving at least for the first eighty or so pages and if one is not interested in antiquities and archeology, the reader might be bored. I happen to have some interest in archeology and anthropology, but even I felt at the beginning the author should get on with it. If the reader gets passed those pages, the story becomes more fast-paced and exciting. I found this book different from the other Mariah Stewart books I've read. At first I wasn't sure I'd like this story, but the more I got into it, the more I enjoyed the read. Miss Stewart's descriptions are wonderful and one feels a definite connection to the hero and heroine. They are very real. Now that I've finished the book, I wonder if the author plans a series featuring Connor and Daria. It almost seems so to me that she does, and I'd welcome reading more about them. Don't let the first pages scare you off. This is a very good read.

(c) Jeannine D. Van Eperen, Reviewer,
GottaWriteNetwork
September 29, 2007

UNFORGETTABLE
By Julie Ortolon
Signet Eclipse
ISBN 19:9-451-222040-0
Romance
4 dance halls

Riley tried for a singing career and left the town of Hope years ago. She had talent and was successful, but never a million seller. In her late twenties she inherits her grandmother's lease to a home in Hope and returns to the Texas Hill Country she loved. She also loved Jackson Hope, but she was a teenager then and he never knew. The Hopes owned the town, one of the few company towns that existed. Riley sings at a restaurant/bar in town and it pays her bills. She is happy and everything was fine until Jackson Hope shows up and begins to run the restaurant. He has every right to do so, but it sets Riley's equilibrium out of kilter. Add to that, Jackson's father wants to tear down Dolly's Music Hall and build a clone to Wal-Mart. Riley had loved the woman who had run the music hall and had even worked for her cleaning the place and sometimes serving the customers as a teenager. There were rumors aplenty about Dolly, and more rumors about Dolly and Jackson's grandfather. Riley begins a crusade to stop the demolition. In doing so she finds she is working closely with Jackson who also wants to keep the Music Hall despite his father's intentions. Jackson is divorced. His marriage was an unhappy one, but one of which his father approved. The elder Hope would never approve of Riley who has a voluptuous body and a raunchy reputation. The historic dance hall can either drive Jackson and Riley together or keep them apart forever.

UNFORGETTABLE is a clever story, fast-paced with likeable characters. Julie Ortolon did a wonderful job of bringing the town of Hope to life, and her descriptions of the Texas Hill Country will make one want to travel there. In fact, she based the fictional town of Hope on a very real Texas town. She used several songs in the book to describe Riley's feelings and if the reader is unfamiliar with the songs, they ought to get to know them. They are wonderful. Another great thing about the book is that fact that all the songs have been recorded by Barbara Calderaro. Don't just buy the book, get the Ms Calderaro's CD, too, the Unforgettable Sound Track. You'll have a wonderful time, reading and listening, and thanking Ms. Calderaro and Julie Ortolon for a marvelous collaboration.

Jeannine Van Eperen, reviewer, GottaWriteNetwork

FACE TIME
By Hank Phillippi Ryan
ISBN 978-0373-881437
Harlequin
Romantic suspense
5 TVs

Charlie McNally is an investigative reporter for a Boston Television station. Charlie's father has been deceased for many years, and her mother has just had plastic surgery in preparation for a new marriage. Dutifully, Charlie visits her mother each day while the woman is in recovery at an exclusive clinic. Charlie has a romance of her own with Josh, who is divorced and has an eight-year-old daughter. Now in her late forties, Charlie knows she won't have a biological child and wonders if she has it in her to become a mother. Even with all the above taking place, Charlie with her producer, Franklin, have set out to prove that a woman, Dorinda Sweeney, who has been convicted of murder and in prison for three years, is actually innocent. The television station is hoping McNally will come up with the scoop of the year, but some politicians are out to derail Charlie's plans.

FACE TIME by Hank Phillippi Ryan is a humdinger of a story. I'm not sure people use the word humdinger anymore, but that is the word that to me best describes this story. Not only is the book suspenseful, the author delves into mother-daughter relationships and a woman's love for her child. Charlie McNally is a very likeable, real person and the reader is sure to root for her to come out of the twists and turns of this mystery unscathed. Since author Ryan is an award-winning investigative reporter in Boston, it is no wonder the settings and the people are all true to life and the story plotline is compelling. I look forward to reading more Charlotte McNally mysteries.

c Jeannine D. Van Eperen, Reviewer, GottaWriteNetwork
November, 2007

THE ART OF TEMPTATION
By Lauren Royal
ISBN: 978-0-451-22245-9
Signet Eclipse
Historical romance
5 portraits

Lady Corinna Chase is an artist and she believes a good one. Her one failing as an artist she believes, is she being a woman, is not supposed to draw anything but landscapes and still life. She yearns to do portraits. She wants to study the human body, so she does the best she can, she goes to the British Museum to study and sketch the Elgin Marbles, mostly statues of Greek gods. Her sisters who accompany her are interested in seeing the Rosetta Stone. They amble off, leaving Corinna to her sketching. It is then the meets artist John Hamilton and Sean Delaney, Hamilton's brother-in-law. The two men dislike each other. Sean's sister, Deidre wants a divorce from John so that she can marry the man she loves. Deidre and John haven't lived together for years, as he is a womanizing, unfaithful and even cruel husband. At the museum the two men see Corinna sketching. John introduces himself as Sean Delaney and tells Corinna that Sean is the artist John Hamilton. Sean, of course denies this, but because John Hamilton is reclusive, few of the London ton have actually seen him, Corinna choses to believe the charade. John promises Sean Delaney that if he, Sean, pretends to be Hamilton and visit his dying uncle, he will grant Deidre a divorce. Sean is reluctant to do such a thing, but to guarantee his sister's happiness, he pledges to do so. Sean had been told the uncle is an unfeeling tyrant. John had not seen his uncle since he was a very small child. When Sean meets the man, he finds that John Hamilton's words were untrue. Sean finds that keeping his promise is harder than he imagined. Not only does he feel guilty lying to the dying man, he becomes fond of the gentleman. To add to his problems, he finds Lady Corinna to be often at the man's home. Corinna finally accepts that Sean is not John and she mostly keeps his secret. He has always told her he was in truth Sean Delaney, but at first she didn't believe him, thinking him to be the reclusive artist Hamilton. Sean is a wealthy self-made man from Ireland, and though he grows to have feelings for Corinna, he knows her family will never accept him. Both try to quell the feelings that arise. Corinna doesn't care if the ton shuns her if she pledges her love for Sean, but Sean doesn't wish to ruin Corinna's reputation, no matter how much he loves her, he knows he cannot have her.

What a charming, can't put down story! I was completely drawn in during the first pages and had to know where the plot led. It is a far more complicated story than I outlined above with many colorful and well-drawn characters. Sean Delaney is a worthy hero and Corinna is feisty, beautiful and talented. A wonderful duo! Lauren Royal, not only wrote a compelling love story of Sean and Corinna in The Art of Temptation, she added an equally compelling sub-plot featuring Griffin, Corinna's brother, and Rachel, a woman he always thought of as a cousin. This is a must read book!

c Jeannine D. Van Eperen, reviewer, Gotta Write Network
December 9, 2007

THE FLU
By Jacqueline Druga-Johnston
General fiction
LBS Books & Hadrosaur Productions
Horror/Thriller
334 pages, paperback
$14.95
3 ½ viruses

In years past illnesses wiped out most of the population, i.e. the Black Plague and the Spanish Flu. That couldn't happen again, could it? Not with all the medical know-how we now have. It couldn't happen, yet it did. In a research station near South Deadhorse, Alaska an entire team is one day wiped out. The FBI start an investigation. Is it a terrorist plot? What could cause sixteen men to perish so quickly? In Lodi, Ohio, an average small town kept in line by a biker-type sheriff, then begins to feel the ravages of an illness. Can a catastrophic illness that decimates an Alaskan research station be connected to Lodi, Ohio? These are some of the events within this story in which a romance is woven between the sheriff and Dylan, a woman with three children and a husband she no longer wants, and with good reason
If you enjoy explicit scenes of terrible illness you may find The Flu worth reading. I found the story rather convoluted and gory, but many people like that type of reading. The hero is not my type of hero, but I'm sure others will disagree with me. If you have a strong stomach, you may find the The Flu interesting. Jacqueline Druga-Johnston certainly did a lot of research to get her medical facts and she is to be congratulated for doing a different type of story. After reading this you'll agree it's better to read about the flu than get it. So get your shot, sit back, and read.

c Jeannine D. Van Eperen, Reviewer, GottaWriteNetwork

December, 24, 2007

JUST LOVE ME
By Laura Henion
Whiskey Creek Press
ebook and trade paperback
Romantic suspense
3 1/2Leis
$5.99

Christen Mathews lives the good life in Hawaii, sharing a home with two friends, and has just gotten a promotion at the advertising agency where she works. She ended an abusive relationship several years ago with a police officer. When she meets Keono, she instinctively keeps him at a distance. She is attracted to the handsome Hawaiian, but he is a police detective, and even though her dead uncle was a decorated policeman, she wants nothing to do with one. Her best friend's boyfriend, however, is a detective working with Keono, and they both think Christen and Keono would make a nice couple. Keono's time is taken up on a series of murders of young women, but he does take time out to think of Christen. When they met something clicked, but both fought their feelings. They often meet, not on purpose, at a nightclub the police frequent run by Christen's late uncle's best friend, Paul, also called Pops. Christen and Keono's feelings for each other surface and they do begin dating. Their careers interfere with the romance as Christen garnered a large account with Michael Leoni, a wealthy businessman, that Keono knows is also a hoodlum. Michael is interested in Christen, and of course Keono is unhappy about the time Christen has to spend with the man on business, at least from Christen's perspective. Michael has other ideas for Christen that do not belong in a business relationship. Keono and the other detectives continue to work on the series of murders and begin to see a relationship between the murders. Just when they are seeing light at the end of the tunnel, Christen appears to be the next victim, and Keono must save her, if he can.

JUST LOVE ME by Laura Henion could be a very good read, if only a good editor worked on it. Usually Advanced Reading Copies have very little errors and a reviewer knows those will be corrected. That is not the case with this. I do implore the publisher to go over this again and make it into the kind of book the story deserves to be. There is way too much telling and not showing. Other verbs to show anger or annoyance can be used besides "pissed or "pissed off that might be okay in dialogue but not in the narrative. All through the copy are misplaced hyphenations of words, such as in the middle of the page and not at the end of the page. I do congratulate Laura Henion for a clever plot in the beautiful setting of Hawaii in JUST LOVE ME.
c Jeannine D. Van Eperen, Reviewer, Gotta Write Network

Jan. 3, 2007