Review: Brace Yourself
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 25, 2012
MadnessLet me start off by getting the bad news out of the way, telling you what issues I had with Madness, by Sorcha MacMurrough:Sweet Lord, the spelling errors!  I am more than willing to forgive an error or two in a good book.  It can even be fun to spot them, it makes you feel clever and perceptive.  Not so in Madness, there were so many, many errors that it became more of a challenge to try to ignore them!  I was seriously disappointed by this because it knocked what could have been a great book down to just a good book, if your willing to overlook the mistakes.Editors, help!  There were a few charactors whom could have done with more development, less repetition.  Along the same lines, I felt like the book could have lost a few chapters, sped things along and been made better for it.  Also, I have to say that I wish addiction and mental illness could be addressed in reality as simply as it is in this book.  Not that this aspect was handled badly, just that it contradicts conventional understanding of both topics.  Its simplified, I guess I would say.  My final complaint is the ending... without giving anything away, I will say that there are some remarkable coincidences and unimaginable good luck.  Something more practical may have been better.Now, all of that being said, I did enjoy this book.  I can honestly say that this book is very different from other romance novels I've read.  For one thing, the main female character, Gabrielle, is the hero of the story.  She literally and figuratively rescues her man, Simon.  Gabrielle is a strong, determined, hard working woman who knows her own mind.  She is not afraid to do what she has to in order to protect the people she loves.  She isn't afraid to go against conventional society norms and make choices and decisions that are right for her, what will make her happy.  Gabrielle was resourceful and stubborn in an endearing way.  She was the kind of character that you wanted to see happy at the end of the story.As for the Hero of the book, Simon... What can I say?  Simon is the kind of man every girl wants to find and keep forever.  Simon is smart, strong, handsome, loyal but with horrors in his past and demons that only his Lady Love can help him overcome.  Simon was passionate, sweet, thoughtful, brave and absolutely devoted to his Lady.  He has an insatiable love and lust for Gabrielle and he is determined to fight to transform himself into the kind of man who is worthy of her love.  One thing that I really appreciated about this story is the fact that Simon's intelligence was celebrated instead of down played or perceived as a weakness.  He's a hot hunk of man, but with a brain and a huge heart.While the physical relationship between Gabrielle and Simon doesn't begin immediately, once it begins... its on!  There was A LOT of sex in this story.  Tastefully done but abundant. The plus side to this, perhaps, is that the love that Gabrielle and Simon feel for one another is obvious and sweet, which for me made the banquet of sex less pointless or tedious.I would recommend this book to friends, with the aforementioned caution on the spelling and grammar errors.  If the small issues I mentioned were fixed, I would have given this book 5 stars.  The characters and the love they shared was solid gold, the story was interesting and manages to draw you into the dark corners that these characters visit, then usher you back to the light with the love they discover with one another.  Madness was worth the read, good enough that I'm not going to include a pun based on the title in my review.