This book begins when Annie and Blake Colwater take their daughter to the airport. The teenager plans to spend several months studying in London. On the drive home, Blake surprises Annie by asking for a divorce. Annie is shocked and totally falls apart. She leaves California and retreats to her hometown of Mystic, Washington. In Mystic, she meets up with her old boyfriend Nick, and immediately rekindles a romance. Nick has problems of his own and is haunted by his wife's death. Izzie, his six year old daughter is so upset by the loss of her mother that she no longer has the ability to speak. There are several different subplots going on and the author manages to juggle them quite well. The dilemma of the child Izzie was by far the most interesting and creative part of the book.

In a lot of ways this was quite an ambitious story, and Kristin Hannah gave an excellent account of the emotions that her characters experienced. She also wrote beautiful descriptive passages about the beauty of the Olympic Peninsula. However, Annie the main character was a little frustrating to read about. She was just too perfect. She's attractive, smart, thin, rich. talented, a great mother and a really nice person! Wow! I also had a difficult time believing that a wife would not have a clue to the fact that the man she was married to for 20 years had consistently been unfaithful to her for ages. Come on Annie, a man can't be working late every night! Perhaps that was Annie's flaw, she was so wrapped up in her daughter and in creating a perfect home that she ignored the signs of a husband who had little loyalty or real interest in his family.

You don't know what you're missing if you've never read a book by Kristin Hannah, and _On Mystic Lake_ is one of the absolute best books ever written. The characters come alive and endear themselves to your heart. Annie is down to earth and easy to read about. Izzie, the little girl who needs to find her way into the world again is precious and Nick is the type of character whom you wish you could jump into the book and give a hug to. _On Mystic Lake_ is by no means "lite reading". The main character, Annie, is getting a divorce from her husband who claims to love another woman. Trying to come to grips with her failing marriage, Annie returns home to Mystic to spend some time with her father. There she meets up with her first love, Nick, who chose her best friend over her, breaking Annie's heart. It turns out that Nick's wife (Annie's old best friend) has died leaving Nick and his daughter Izzie devestated. When the three first get together, it's sort of like the blind leading the blind. They are all so hurt that it is hard to see who needs more help. But, Annie brings healing to Izzie's soul, the little girl mends Annie's heart, and a love rekindles between Nick and Annie. Still, things are not that easy, and a conflict makes the world harder in Mystic. Kristin Hannah is an amazingly gifted author and her talent shines in _On Mystic Lake_. Her descriptive writing will take you to another place- a little logging town in Washington where mist floats above the ground and life moves at a slower pace. This is a beautiful book about three healing souls who learn that bad things do happen but you can get around them. I'd recomend _On Mystic Lake_ to anyone who enjoys putting down a book with a sense that the world is a wonderful place and they can do something to make it better.

Living in the Pacific Northwest, Kristen Hannah's On Mystic Lake truly made me appreciate the beauty of the northwest. Sure, it rains cats and dogs, but on a beautiful sunny day it can't be beat.

On the day that her daughter leaves for London Annie's husband of 20 years tells her he loves another woman and wants a divorce. Annie is devestated. After spending the past 20 years being "the perfect wife" and "the perfect mother" she doesn't know what to do with her life. So she goes home to Mystic, Washington, a small logging community near the Olympic penninsula.

When Annie returns she meets up again with her old friend (who married her best friend from high school). His wife commited suicide 8 months earlier and he and his 6 year old daughter are having a hard time coping. With nothing else to do, Annie offers to help him with his daughter.

Slowly Annie and Nick fall in love, but Annie is still married. After a few months Annie's husband decides he made a mistake and wants her back, but Annie isn't ready to go back.

This is a wonderful book about love, friendship, motherhood and finding yourself. This book is highly recommended and next time you find yourself in the beautiful Pacific Northwest remember that it doesn't rain every day, only 300 days a year.

I finished this book last night and I am still chuckling this morning. This is a really fun book. Kenny is a golfer who is having a little bad luck in his career. To get back into the "swing" of things, so to speak, Kenny has agreed to act as tour guide for Lady Emma. Emma is an English headmistress of an all girls school in London. It took me about 2-3 chapters before I really started to get into this romance, but when things take off, they really go. The love scenes were hot and the romance was sweet. Not only were the H/H fun to watch, but the secondary characters were great too. Just when I thought I had seen everything, Kenny/Emma would say or DO something so outrageous, that I just had to crack up! The dialogue caught me by surprise so many times, that I have go back and read it again to see if I missed anything.

Lady Be Good becomes a collectible like all of Ms. Phillips' other novels. While this book definitely has Ms. Phillips' trademark writing style, I felt it lacked something. It left me waiting for something to happen that never did. I'm used to reading her novels in one sitting and this one took me a little longer to get through. Lady Emma and Kenny were an interesting couple, but the chemistry didn't jump off the page at you like it usually does with all of her other novels. The storyline with the fiance in England was disappointing, but the sub-plot with Dexter and Torie was great. I was happy to see the characters from her novel "Fancy Pants", Francesca and Dallie Beaudine, as well as their son, Teddy make an appearance. While I always anxiously await Ms. Phillips' books, their story is still my favorite.

It is impossible to read this book and not find yourself grinning and laughing. Even in public places when I was trying to be inconspicuous - I found myself grinning like a fool and chuckling. People around me tried to see what I was reading! My children begged me to let them in on the humor. The only complaint you will have about author Susan Elizabeth Phillips is that she needs to publish more! She will not only have you thoroughly enjoying the main characters Emma and Kenny but she will entertain you with the antics and relationships of the "supporting cast" of Torie and Dexter. She brought back old favorites - Francesca and Dallie Beaudine. No one does a better job of offering greating subplots while keeping the main story at peak entertainment. Please, Susan, more books!!!

The Liar's Club is an emotive story with relatable and powerful characters, which makes the book so brilliant. From the Oil Refinery Town of Leitchfield, Texas to the mountains of Colorado Mary Karr humorously describes her tumultuous and chaotic childhood. The book emphasizes the destructive impact that alcohol can have on people. While reading the book you begin to compare and contrast the Karr family with your own and by doing so the reader will realize the importance of family unity. Mary Karr is able to describe her childhood with such accuracy that when you have finished the book it seems that you experienced her upbringing. Even though the author endured a frenzied past, The Liar's Club contains an even amount of humor and sadness. The Liar's Club is a great read and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys wit and dark humor.

I bought this book because I had read so much about Karr's "sequel" memoir, Cherry. I figured that if I was going to read it, I should start at the beginning. I should make a note here that I'm a sucker for the memoir rage that's been sweeping bookstores nationwide -- there's just something ultimately satisfying about reading a book of life as opposed to a book of events. Karr met my expectations with a one-two suckerpunch. The Liar's Club is extraordinarily well written; I love Karr's colloquialisms, her mother's foul rantings, her sister's calm instructions. The book is a testament to the age-old adage that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Karr's childhood is spent on the brink of lunacy with her brilliant yet completely f-ed up mother, her heartbroken father, and her sneaky, loony grandmother. Karr's memoir is the stuff of raw human emotions -- lust, hatred, despair, and longing. The book is marinated by the booze the characters drink and then seasoned by the plentiful "horking" that occurs on every other page. A wonderful book.

Mary Karr grew up in an ugly place, the refinery/swamp town of Port Arthur, Texas, and in an ugly situation, with a mentally unstable mother and a hot tempered, hard drinking father. Yet out of such ugliness, she extracted great beauty in order to write this dazzling memoir. Despite Karr's dysfunctional childhood, her writing is completely devoid of woe-is-me whining or psychobabble.

Karr has a gift for spinning a tale, perhaps inherited from her father or honed at gatherings of his friends in "The Liar's Club," a group that met to drink, play cards, and swap stories. And boy, the stories she tells! There's the stories about her mother's manic/pyschotic episodes, including one time when she set her children's belongings on fire, another time when she attempted to drive the family off a bridge, and a third time when she threatened her lazy husband with a gun. Karr also tells about her inconsistent relationship with her father, who suffered a difficult life but emerged, if not unscathed, then unbroken.

Most remarkable about the book, though, are not the amazing stories but the matter of fact, even at times hilarious tone in which they are told. The woman telling these stories is no victim; she is a survivor. A miserable childhood did not cause Mary Karr to surrender her spirit, but rather forged her in fire and made her stronger.

I loved this book! I thought "The Viscount Who Loved Me" was really good already and that it couldn't possibly get any better, but boy was I wrong!! This is a wonderful book that gives the reader more insight onto the second brother of the Bridgerton family who was previously shrouded in much mystery. In this novel, you get to see Benedict become a "prince" who rescues the "damsel in distress". It is a wonderful story that combines the story of cinderella into a story about the second Bridgerton brother. An excellent read for everyone who loved the previous books about the Bridgerton siblings! A must read for all of those who love Julia Quinn!

Another Bridgerton bites the dust....or a romantic love at first sight, only it takes Benedict quite a while to realize that this is his soul mate!

Sophie Beckett, illegitimate daughter of an Earl, along with the VERY wicked step mother, gets the ONE chance of a lifetime to go to a ball, a masquerade ball, and in so doing meets the man of her dreams. Much like Cinderella, when the clock strikes midnight she must flee.

Julia Quinn takes over from there and a most delightful and positively romantic tale evolves in these two star crossed lovers finding one another again. Sophie recognizes Benedict immediately, but Benedict is still looking for the vision from the masquerade ball and doesn't recognize his soulmate dressed in the housemaid's garb.

A truly wonderful tale, again from the pen of Ms. Quinn, whose novels are an absolute delight. I'll read anything this lady writes and positively it will come up a winner. Don't miss this one, it's a keeper!

I was a little aprehensive about this book at first, very weary of the Cinderella plot, however found myself falling in love with the character's as soon as I met them.

I read through a couple other reviews and I cannot find myself agreeing that Sophie or Benedict lacked character, and I personally rather enjoyed a plot revolving around Sophie's illigitimate birth. I thought it brought up some interesting issues concerning a very real curcumstance not uncommon during those times. In today's society the exact same situation would be irrelivant (my husband was born out of wedlock and NO one thinks anything of it), however back then, it quite obviously was the difference between being a member of society and being forced into servitude (and honestly back then many illigitimate children had far worse fates than becoming a servant as Sophie had).

I enjoyed this book very much, although yes, I do agree that it perhaps lacked a lot of the spunk that's in her other Bridgerton novels, but I still couldn't put it down until I had read the last page! Still very excellent and I can't wait until June when her next Bridgerton novel comes out, "Romancing Mr. Bridgerton". For those of you who don't know, it will be Colin and Penelope... hmmmm... I guess Colin will be eating his words when he said that he wouldn't marry her in "An Offer From a Gentleman". ~*giggles*~ I can't wait!!!

And I'm starting to gather my own list of suspects as to just who Lady Whistledown is... ~*smile*~ I can't wait until her identity is finally revealed!

I've read one of Barbara Delinsky's books about eight years ago, and I was impressed. That book, A Woman Betrayed, kept me in search of an interesting book Barbara. Admittedly, Coast Road is readable, but the plot is unrealistic. Jack and Rachel's two daughters, 13 and 15 year old, had the intelligence of 3 and 5 year olds. Rachel was the one with the head injuries, but one has to wonder if Jack suffered from head injuries also. The story was told in 16 days, which seemed to be enough time for Jack to realize that he's put the love of his life on the back burner for the past six year. Grow up Jack! The only good thing about Coast Road is the fact that Delinsky keeps the reader interested in finding out whether or not Rachel wakes up.

The story is wonderful, and the way it's presented is both unique and interesting. Ms. Delinsky has a writing style and a way of exploring contemporary women's issues that few other authors can match. If you haven't read this book, by all means do so. It will probably make you smile and definitely make you cry.

Having said that, I found Jack to be a much more sympathetic character than Rachel. Yes, he has flaws. And, yes, he carries much of the weight of responsibility for the loss of their marriage. Much...but not all.

I didn't feel that Rachel ever owned up to her own contribution to their divorce. After all, she walked out on Jack. Without explanation. She took his daughters and went someplace where she could be more creative. But never - not once - did she tell him why she was leaving or what he was doing wrong. She expected him to read her mind in several situations - to anticipate needs she never expressed - and when he couldn't, she punished him. Jack had to discover Rachel's feelings secondhand and I think that was an injustice.

That was the weakest link in this book. The relationships between Jack and his daughters and Jack and Rachel's friends are developed beautifully (and, incidentally, comprise much of the book). Likewise, Jack's path of discovery and growth is believable and heartwrenching.

Jack's character alone makes this book worth reading.

Having seen the paperback on the rack and reading a brief review from a guild publication, I decided to try Coast Road by Barbara Delinsky, a first-time author read. How could I have missed a Delinsky book - this was wonderful! In such a tender love story, it was so refreshing to have a male as the dominant character and read and feel from his perspective. The evolution of the story as told and seen from Jack McGill, his daughters, Rachel's friends and family was compelling. Sometimes you don't want a cliched happy ending, but I was rooting for this family all the way. The reawakening love for his ex-wife and his daughters and, in turn, their acceptance of him made for many teary scenes. It was refreshing to see compassion, tenderness, friendship, confusion, determination, hostility, impatience, and love woven so intrically together without explicit sex. Delinsky's description of the Big Sur area was so vivid. I've never been there, but feel like I have now. A sequel would be welcome, but in the meantime I'll be reading other Delinsky works.

Robin Schone is remarkably successful in transposing modern sexual sensibilities onto Victorian era characters. Her sexual scenes are explicit, and the vocabulary is very blunt. If you are a fan of euphemism and are turned off by candid, almost clinical, love scenes, this book is not for you.

The heroine in this book, Elizabeth Petrie, is the sexually frustrated wife of a prominent politician who has avoided sleeping with her for 12 years. In an effort to woo him away from an imagined mistress and to satisfy her own needs, she asks Ramiel Devington to teach her how to entice and satisfy a man. Ramiel, a notorious sensualist, eagerly undertakes Elizabeth's education with an eye towards getting her into his own bed. The ensuing lessons are are a masterpiece of erotic fiction. Not only is Schone able to build remarkable sexual anticipation, but she does it without the main characters even touching. It isn't until well into the second half of the book that the two get together.

The remainder of the plot is original, but a little overwrought and gothic in my opinion. The secondary characters were well-crafted. Some people may be turned off by the adulterous aspects of Elizabeth and Ramiel's romance. However, I never thought of their relationship that way. By the time Elizabeth strays, I thought it was justified by her husband's brutal rejection and realization that the marriage was effectively over.

All in all, I found The Lady's Tutor to be a remarkable book and would highly recommend it. Nevertheless, it is not a book for everyone, and those with delicate sensibilities should look elsewhere.

This is the first "romance" novel I have ever purchased, the first book ordered through amazon. When I saw the cover I thought, "Oh, no, what did I order?" But then I started reading. I finished the book five hours later. Only one word can sum up my feelings: WOW. Bravo, Robin Schone! Thank you for this sexy, amazing love story. And my husband thanks you too, even though he hasn't read it.

I recently purchased "Captivated", where Ms. Schone was one of the featured authors. The story was very moving and sweet, it handled the innocence of a young woman so beautifully, that I immediately went out and looked for another book by Ms. Schone. That is how I came across The Ladys Tutor. Once I began reading this book, I really could not put it down! The story of Elizabeth Petre and Ramiel the "Bastard Sheik" was so well written. Although Elizabeth Petre was married in the story, Ms. Schone dealt with her sexual naivete in a very loving; yet, erotic way. It was the best romance story I have read this year. It is definitely a book that I intend to keep so that I may enjoy again and again!!! I came across this review site while searching for more books by Ms. Schone. I can't wait to read more!!!

The plot and characters in this book are great, but it would have been a lot better if the length was cut by about 100 pages. Just one chase sequence goes on for so many pages uneccesarily. The police are following a suspect on foot, and Pearson goes on and on with the suspect getting on a bus; off a bus; in a building; out of building; etc., while the police keep switching off chasing. Rather than being suspenseful, the story comes to a complete halt. This happens repeatedly througout the book.

This book just took too darn long to get where it's going. But there's also a lot to like. The recurring character of Lou Boldt is an interesting one, and his relationship to his fellow detective, Daphne Matthews, is interesting. The plot, in which Boldt is trying to solve the brutal attack on a fellow officer, whose neck was broken, is quite good. The attack took place during a "Blue Flu" and pits striking officers against working officers like Boldt. There are clues that suggest cops might have been involved in this and other attacks. The author does a good job of showing us how torn up Boldt is by the tension between him and his fellow officers.

I would recommend the book to avid Pearson and Boldt fans, but warn them they'll have to suffer through a lot of extraneous pages to get to the good stuff.

A case of the "blue flu" has struck the Seattle police force, causing a majority of the force to be on an unofficial strike, leaving Detective Lou Boldt to remain (forced actually)on the job.

With the near death of a female officer, and a string of house robberies, Boldt is pushed to the limit to find answers.

Boldt enlists the help of police psychologist Daphne Matthews, and Sergeant John LaMoia to aid in his investigation.

As Boldt struggles with three seemingly seperate situations, he begins to question if they are actually un-related. As things go out of control, resulting in more robberies and "warnings" to Boldt, he refuses to give up, putting his life on line to solve this case.

I will start off by saying...THIS IS AN EXCELLENT NOVEL. I am not going further into detail on the plot, all the fun is finding out the secrets as you go. "Middle Of Nowhere" is a fast-paced, well written novel that entertains as it shocks with new plot twists. Boldt is one of the most interesting and likable hero's in any current fiction series.

Ridley Pearson has written the novel that lives up to his reputation of being the "best thriller writer alive". After the disappointing "The First Victim", fans of the Boldt series get what they expect, a great book. If you are new to the series, start with this book and then go back and read the other Boldt novels, excluding "The First Victim" (not the best entry in the series).

"Middle Of Nowhere" is a great summer read...it's great read in any season.

A MUST read!

Nick Gonnella

I had one problem with this book. The wait I will have until the next Lou Boldt novel. I usually don't like what i consider a serial novelist, someone who brings us the same character and because of that familiarity the story suffers. Ridley Pearson trancends this. It is a great story first and the characters are having true problems which makes them real, therefore making the story ring all the more true. The story of the sickout within the Police force setting "brother against brother" could have made the book itself but Ridley goes beyond that. We get to meet our mysterious Chinese Mafia head and wonder when and what favors are going to be asked. Ridley, and to the buyers out there, this was a great read, I hate cliches but I could not put it down. These characters are friends now and if you don't know them get to know them, buy The First Victim when you pick up this book. This makes for better than just summer reading get ready to be hooked and hopefully soon Ridley will lead us out of the Middle of Nowhere.

I went into this book expecting greatness, that was all I had been hearing. But instead I encountered mediocrity. What I like most about the book is that it pulls you into another world. Being able to get inside such an isolated country, especially at such a volatile time, is a rare treat. We the reader get to experience Mao's Cultural Revolution through the eyes of two of its victims.
But other than that I was frankly a little disappointed. There is some nice poetic imagery but the writing is nothing special. It is a translation of a French work, so I will concede that maybe some of the beauty of language was lost in the translation. And I don't want to spoil the book, but it seems the message of the entire story is one that exalts literature and the ideas that it contains. Now the ending of the story seems to completely contradict this solid message and leaves the reading confused and unsure as of how to continue.
But it was still definitely a worthwhile read. Don't worry. It won't take too much time.

This book takes place on a remote island in china were two boys, Luo and the un-named narrator, are sent to their "re-education" in the cultural revolution. The village headman discovers their talent for story telling and they are sent to the city to watch a film and present an oral presentation to the village and make it as long as the film. They succeed in doing this and they are sent once a month to see a movie in the city afterward. In the city the boys meet the tailor's daughter the beautiful seamstress as people called her. Luo falls in love with the seamstress instantly and they visit her often. Later Luo steals some forbidden western books from a neighbor in the village and they are wrapped up in the stories of the city and love. Luo tries to educate the seamstress with books by Balzac to make her his perfect match. This is a great book I recommend it to 5th graders and up. The book has a great ending and can be read in a day but you will think about it much longer!

A friend loaned me this book, urging me to read it, which I did in 24 hours and so did my wife. A very good read.

The author transported me back in time to 1971 and to a village at the summit of a mountain in China near Tibet where two teenage boys are being "re-educated" as part of the Cultural Revolution led by the Gang of Four. They are being "re-educated" because their parents are medical professionals. The narrator's parents are medical doctors whose crime was that they were "stinking scientific authorities". His friend's father is a dentist who had fixed the teeth of Mao Zedong, Madame Mao and Chaing Kai-shek and whose crime was mentioning their names together in public.

The village is surrounded in mist. No electricity, only oil lamps, no vehicles, no commercial activity of any kind, not even a clock--the villagers tell time by sunrise and sunset. The village is illiterate. The villagers work in the paddy fields or the coal mines every day.

The teenagers are assigned to a hut on stilts with no furniture other than two beds. Underneath their hut is a "pigsty occupied by a large, plump sow"

The Cultural Revolution turns everything around. The narrator, age 17, has a violin ("Wy-o-lin") and he plays a Mozart piece that enthralls the village and which he calls "Mozart Is Thinking of Chairman Mao" so that it will not be considered reactionary.
The Old Miller's song, "Tell me/What does the young nun fear?/She fears the old monk/No more and no less/Just the old monk", becomes "Tell me/Little bourgeois lice,/What do they fear?/They fear the boiling wave of the proletariat."

The narrator's friend Luo, age 18, is a great storyteller. To the delight of the village headman, Luo tells stories of films he has seen. The headman then sends the two boys on foot to the small town of Yong Jing, a four day trip, so that they can see the monthly cinema shown there and to retell its story to the villagers.

The Seamstress is the very attractive daughter of the only tailor in the district. The tailor is so important that he travels in a sedan chair borne by two bearers followed by a porter carrying his sewing machine.

Coal is the primary source of heat. For a few weeks, the boys work naked in a coal mine, with passages so low that they have to crawl. Luo contracts malaria, the first cure for which is whipping him with tree branches. When the still sick Luo arrives at the Seamstress's house she brings in four sorceresses at midnight to frighten the evil spirits from his body.

In the midst of this total misery, the boys and the Seamstress are able to find some banned books, secretly owned by "Four Eyes", another boy being "re-educated" in an adjoining village. The first book is Balsac's Ursule Mirouét. Others follow, books by Dumas, Flaubert, Gogol, Melville and Romain Rolland. These books transport them into the nineteenth century where they discover romance and love, emotions banned during the Cultural Revolution.

In the privacy of their hut, they tell the story of the Count of Monte Cristo to the old tailor. The tailor then sews blue sailor trousers with "fluttering bell bottoms and whiff of the Côte D'Axur." Five-pointed anchors are embroidered on buttons.

A dying preacher is surrounded by his family with a tape recorder pleading: "If you could just repeat one of Chairman Mao's sayings-that would be perfect. Just a few words, or a slogan, go on, try! They'll know their grandfather wasn't a reactionary after all, that he'd put all that behind him!" The only thing the tape recorder catches, however, is a final prayer in Latin.

Only after he is promised the Fu Lei translation of Balsac, does the doctor the narrator finds agree to terminate the Seamstress's pregnancy. Fu Lei had been labeled a class enemy.

To the Cultural Revolution, Western Culture is like a cancer that must be removed to preserve the Communist Society. As the novel demonstrates, Western Culture has spread too far to be killed. The remnants that remain, however, are indestructible and continue to grow back.

Spiritually, the boys are not far from their parents. The narrator uses his knowledge of the medical world to help the Seamstress find a doctor. Luo uses his father's skills to fill a cavity in the headman's tooth.

Many of the characters in the book (the boys, the Seamstress, the tailor, the village headman, the doctor, the villagers) are benefited by the transformative power of fiction, whether they read it or hear it from the boys. I too felt its power when I read Sijie's novel.

First of all: be forwarned! Many of the reviews below mine give away some plot twists that are more fun to stumble across on one's own. I'm glad I didn't read any of these reviews before I read the book.

As for the book: without giving anything away, this is a very enjoyable, suspensful psychological thriller. The ending is just surprising enough to be satisfying - no absurd plot twists, just some skillfully incorporated red herrings. I read this whole book in one sitting - it is a tough one to put down!

For a first novel this is written quite well. Blanchard does a wonderful job invoking the mood of her small town with its dark secrets. She has a talent for fleshing out characters and settings using the fewest amount of words with great impact. The only thing I found annoying (not at first, but by the end of the book) was her obsession with describing how things smell. It does a fine job of putting the reader into the book, but when overdone becomes a bit distracting.

If you are looking for a great read, a fun "whodoneit" and a first look at a writer with a promising future, I highly recommend this book.

I listened to this book on Recorded Books audiotape and the narrator did a great job of capturing the different characters. In part one, the sherriff of Flowering Dogwood is trying to solve the murder of a 14 year old girl with Down Syndrome. He hates to believe his son Billy had any part in it, but he and a group of high school friends were recently caught killing stray cats. As the evidence begins to point straight at Billy, his father cannot deny his guilt. Unable to turn in his son, he commits suicide. The story then jumps to the present day when the sherriff's daughter Rachel is now a detective and decides to reopen the unsolved case. The plot thickens when a doctor's 29 year old daughter, Clair, disappears and it just so happens that she worked at the Blind school with Rachel's brother Billy. Several others are suspects too, and the story takes alot of twists and turns as the reader tries to figure out who is behind the eventual murder of Clair, and then the abduction of Clair's younger sister and her boyfriend. It seems inevitable that the two cases are tied together, though almost 20 years apart. Alice Blanchard did a nice job of creating a good mystery with a surprising ending that kept me guessing all the way. I am looking forward to more of her work.

This is the best psychological thriller I've read in a long, long time. I would recommed it for the intelligent reader. I suspect it's not for the average mystery buff, though I may be wrong. It's dark, complicated and challengingly difficult. At a very high level of prose. The characters are brutally real. As someone else mentioned, it reminded me of Thomas Harris. This is a great book and I think it does an impressive balancing act between literary fiction and page-turner. I'm looking forward to what else Alice Blanchard has to offer the world.

This is the second book I have read by Ms. Crusie and found it about the same in comedy and story-line. The humor was okay, but not up to my expectations. I liked the fact that the author had the main character of Quinn have a close friend that was a woman, when most romance novels focus on the hate between two women instead of the joy and friendship. I also liked the male lead better in this book than her other one "Tell Me Lies". he was more real and believeable.

~Quinn McKenzie is tired of her boring life and her boring boyfriend. She is sick and tired of living what she calls a 'beige life' and intends to do something about it before she goes nuts! But what she finds out is changing her life is not going to be easy. For a respected art teacher with everything going for her, the towns people are shocked to find out that the 'good girl' who is dating the perfect guy is not so 'perfect' or 'good'.
She begins by adopting a stray dog and what sounds really innocent and 'beige' turns crazy in a matter of one day! Dog-napping, breaking and entering, seduction, sabotage, stalking and more secrets than she really wants to know and two men that are suddenly crazy over her! Quinn has to calm things down before her normally 'beige' life turns deadly!

The male lead of Nick Ziegler is great, he's not some super'buffed man with rippling muscles, but a normal guy who has been best friends with Quinn and also her sister's ex-husband, lol. He doesn't expect to fall in love with Quinn when he is caught in the middle of her mad world! Or was he always in love with shy and quiet Quinn? Can he put his feelings aside in the name of friendship when some guy suddenly starts stalking her peaceful world? Or will he become suddenly obsessed with her also?
There are some really funny parts and the 'love' scenes nearly set fire to the pages! All in all a fun read, but i wouldn't rate it with the best...

Tracy Talley~@

"Crazy for You" is the first book I have read from Jennifer Crusie and I only picked it up after reading good reviews from Amazon.[com.] I have to admit she is fast becoming one of my favourite contemporary-romance author!

"Crazy for You" is sexy and witty and the conversation between characters are funny as well. Besides liking the part about Nick and Quinn, (Duh, who doesn't?! But it helps that Nick is super-hot and Quinn is so lovable,) I also really liked the part about Max and Darla. Throw in the part about Quinn's ex,Bill, an ex-boyfriend-turned-freaky-stalker, and you have the perfect read filled with romance, steamy sex, and just a bit of suspense.

"Crazy for You" is recommended to everyone. Need I say more?

I absolutely loved this book. I read "Tell Me Lies" last year and did not purchase this book until it came out in paperback. What a suprise! After reading this I will not even wait for her next book to come out in pb. I am running to the store for "Welcome To Temptation" in March!The reason I loved this book were the characters and Ms. Crusie's wonderful writing style. Funny and sexy go well together! Also I love the fact that Quinn and Nick seem like normal people. Not perfect, yet still attractive to each other. They are not super rich or super thin or super models! A nice change from all those other romances where the hero and heroine have perfect looks/bodies/money, blah, blah, blah.And Quinn's family and friends are as intersting as she is. Not to mention hard headed. I loved them all! I only wish it didn't have to end! Bravo Ms. Crusie. You are a terriffic writer and my favorite new author!