This book easily kept my interest, but at various parts I felt like I was hitting the wall in a marathon. I'm not sure why the book is as lengthy as it is. Many of the "events" such as the wedding, derby party, and horse show came off as contrived. It was as if the author struggled to imagine different scenarios to bring the suspects together for another clue to emerge. If that is the case, then what would have helped was some meaningful character development not just for the sake of writing a mystery. The chain of events should have been more seamless. The pace of the plot is very uneven, especially during the first third of the book which seems to get nowhere fast. As a reader noted in reviewing another of this author's works, detective Sarah is unmemorable, not fully developed. The fact that Sarah is a teaching fellow in English and that her husband is a doctor is wasted. They barely have presence in the story, in furthering the mystery, or in solving the crime. (The pivotal episode where Sarah gets to use her English lit background is pretty shallow.) Maybe one of the problems is that this "drawing room mystery" set in the Maine countryside makes too small of a world to create any sustained intrigue? Having said all of this, however, the book did manage to keep my attention for some reason. Very mixed review.

If you are interested in the history of comics then this is A great book for you. However if you are interested in drawing and selling comics you DO NOT want this book it says almost nothing about the actual drawing part. Although it does has A few helpful hints such as shadow, different inking styles and helping you decide whether you should use a brush, pen, or marker. All in all I decided it was not very good at all and think that How TO Draw Comics The MARVEL way would be A much better investment for anyone.

I guess if I had not already had the book Lucky Star, I might have really liked this book but I really didn't. I actually won the book on an auction and couldn't wait to receive it but to my horror it was exactly the same as Lucky Star printed in and around 1984 except larger and with a different cover. The portrait inside was the same as the cover which is really the only good thing about this book. What was even more worse was that the pictures were all weird looking, I mean in the book Lucky Star they were all basically black and white but these ones in this newer copy were like negatives and really bad colors like blue tints to Madonna's face. Gee it's no wonder Madonna did not want this book published. I say if you have "lucky star" and later titled "her own story", don't bother with this one at all unless you really want the portrait.

Back Cover description: With her family's future happiness in Tareq al-Khaima's all-controlling hands, Sarah Hillyard was persuaded to become the sheikh's traveling companion for a year. She remembered his gentleness toward her as a young girl, but now she suspected Tareq's scheme was a calculated means of getting closer to the beautiful woman she had become-with no promise of commitment on his part.
Tareq claimed to have lost the capacity to love and he was so totally self-contained, so frustratingly untouchable that Sarah surprised herself by wanting to find out how he would react if she turned the tables-and set about seducing him!

Not a book I really liked. And Tareq doesn't make the first move, Sarah does. She offers herself, sort of, and Tareq takes her up on it. Sarah's character doesn't do much other than react and Tareq is an iceman. I couldn't really care about these two.

I posted my initial review of this book before finishing it
and my first review was rather negative. I think it is worth
following up, so I have changed my review after finishing the
class. My review has gotten a little worse...

Conclusions :

This book is nearly devoid of subject matter provided you
understand basic supply and demand. When houses are scarse
they cost more, when there are vacancies, they cost less.

The book has a companion study guide, and teachers edition
with test, so your teacher doesn't have to do any work. That
is not so unusual, but read on...

The study guide only matches the book for the first 6 chapters
and then runs amok. Nearly half of the study guide questions
are subjective and misleading. The content of the textbook
is often contradicted by the tests and the study guide.

The teachers editon has a significant number of the test
questions wrong. If your teacher chose this sorry text, you
can almost bet they will mark you wrong on the tests and you
will have little or no opportunity for rebuttal because your
teacher is fundamentally lazy or they would have picked the
better text by Hubert et al. My teacher did not return our
tests at all, and when we reviewed the answers he refused to
consider valid arguments that there might have been a mistake
except in one case where the whole class was shouting at him.

This text was written in the early 1990s. Some parts have been
updated, some have not. The text is rarely wrong or misleading,
but it is geared at junior high level. The study guide and the
teachers materials seem to have been prepared by someone other than
the text author, they are often dead wrong, contradictory, or subjective so you should prepare to be frustrated by the
experience of taking a class based on this textbook.

I should add that I am getting a good grade in the class, I
am mostly angry that I have spent so much time and have learned
absolutely nothing and my teacher and the author of this text
are profiting at my and my classmates expense. If I could do
this over again I would drive to a farther away school in order
to find somebody who wanted to teach.

It is difficult for me to believe this text was assigned for a college level "Real Estate Economics" course. The print is huge, the language simplistic and dumbed down to the point of being, well, pointless. Lots of statements followed by "however" and "on the other hand" in some sort of loosey-goosey conversational style that falls flat on it's face. It's economics. It's boring, just give the facts without consdescending pablum. This book is practically worthless if you are actually trying to learn something new. Very disappointing. I pity the fools (like me!) who have the misfortune of having this text assigned to their course.

I could not even finish this book. After 100 pages I found the whole story line dis-jointed, strange and distasteful. There are too many great books out there to bog your mind down with this one

I was very disappointed with this book -- one of the perilously few I'll be returning.

(1) With rare exception, there are not measurements or quantities given (and the directions aren't very explicit). This makes it awfully difficult for a novice. Although there are admittedly colored pictures of each craft, I don't consider them sufficiently detailed/large/clear to suffice by themselves with the often sketchy directions.

(2) I, myself, was unimpressed with most of the items shown. I perused the book hoping to find *something* worthwhile to justify keeping it, but just couldn't do so.

Particularly in light of the high price, I was greatly disappointed. There are many sensational craft books available, many of them dealing with nature crafts (and many of them pretty quick). I feel that the others provide much better directions.

JMHO.