Review: Contrived plot, not character-driven, but okay for a romance
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 23, 2012
If I think of this as another entry in the romance genre, okay, the novel delivers what readers probably expect. I need happy endings, I like heroines who triumph over horrible adversity, but I can't enjoy plots that are manufactured with little regard to character development and plausbility.Kitty the bear? SO COOL, I don't care if this plot device is contrived. Nope. LOVE it. But then, after the awesome, Shardik-like moment of truth, this novel degenerates into something inspired by that 1980s movie, "Fatal Attraction." I won't say what, but come on, already, after the unthinkable happens one time, it shouldn't happen twice, much less 3 times or more. Just END the conflict please and stop dragging it out with one unrealistic scenario after another. (Including that old plot device, eavesdropping or stumbling onto a scene that looks bad but realy isn't, and not bothering to stop and verify if what you saw is what was really going on.)As Woods Woman heroines go, this girl wasn't very well explained. For a mere child to rise from a grave (left there for dead) and survive for the next 8 years would require a lot more explaining. If the plot is going to be derivative, why not visit books like Gary Paulen's "Hatchet" which shows us how a 13-year-old boy survives a plane crash and weeks (or months; Paulsen wrote two versions) in the remotest wilderness?But if this is a quickly written novel for the reader of quickies, fans of the genre won't be disappointed.