Review: Okay, but many opportunities missed to make it terrific.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 31, 2012
The opening chapter was excellent, giving a promise of scary elements, but the author misses the opportunity to make this romance novel exciting.The premise is fine, if fairly traditional - abused wife finds a fine, sexy man to fall in love with - but after the first few chapters, the story has far too much side-tracking imagery and repetitive description of how the characters think the other feels. I lost patience about half the way through and started flicking pages to find some action.For an abused woman, Maggie recovers unbelievably fast from being terrified of all men to falling in lust with her employer and willing to become his mistress. Another issue I have, is that a woman who has been beaten with a belt and bashed as many times as the heroine should have a lot of scars on her arms, back and legs to show for it. It is this lack of attention to detail which causes many novels to fall short.The secondary characters, Kathleen and Duncan, were interesting, with depth and spark to their characters.Overall, it was an okay read, but the ending is rushed as though the author suddenly realised she needed to followup on the original plot, which could have rippled in the background like a circling shark.There are formatting errors most of the way through which may not be the fault of the author, but which need to be addressed in the very near future.