The Write Man For Her

The Write Man For Her by Christie Walker Bos

**

This book is a fun, sweet, enjoyable read. I would describe it as harmless. Not life changing. The main character is an adult woman taking a creative writing class. She's fascinated by her mysterious professor and hunts him down, discovering that he is paraplegic.

He is more enjoyable than many of the very dramatic romance novels with disabled heroes. He lives an independent life, is mostly well-adjusted, and fights the creepy bad guy.

The devo moments were fairly low for me. In a lot of ways it doesn't feel like Brant is connected. In other words, the writing lightly flies past how he moves, how he is living on a houseboat, how he deals with stairs, and the effect is like he is sort-of floating, but not grounded in the world.

There is an interview with the author available here: http://www.ruthmadison.com/interview-christie-walker-bos/

Family Reunion

Family Reunion by Jill Metcalf

No Stars

I was barely able to make it through this book, not sure why I kept trying. I suppose I thought it might get better, but it didn't.

There was a lot of head-hopping, switching point-of-view frequently and without warning.

The plot was thin and any conflict that came up was resolved within a paragraph or two, there was no sense of over-arching story. The book had no structure, the story meandering all over the place without coming to a real point.

The dialogue was very stiff and not believable, a trap that historic fiction can easily fall into.

The hero was difficult to take seriously, since he peppered his speech with affectionate terms in just about every single sentence he spoke. He also was used as the vehicle to describe the heroine, which meant that he was observing how in fashion her dress was and the hem line and style of ribbons, which made him seem like he couldn't possibly be a straight male.

In devo terms, the hero is paralyzed in an accident where a horse drawing a carriage got startled by some hooligans. Leaving aside the historical unlikeliness of him surviving with such an injury, the book glosses over too much. There are too-easy solutions for any difficulty that might arise. I didn't find any dev thrill at all, but that might be because I was already too frustrated by the writing and not able to get immersed in the story.

Planet of the Blind

Planet of the Blind by Stephen Kuusisto

****** Top Marks

This is a fantastic book.  It is Stephen Kuusisto's autobiography, it is wonderfully written with really interesting comparisons.  It is called Planet of the Blind because he feels that he doesn't fit in anywhere.  His blindness was caused by being born prematurely and the incubator was too oxygenised.  Although he can see something; colours and movement, his mother and father refused to accept that he was more blind than not and thus Stephen Kuusisto found himself not belonging to either the sighted world or the blind world. 

He is so positive and through his writing you completely immerse yourself in his life and see the world as he sees/saw it.  The enthusiasm to make things work for him, and as he states, he tried to pass as a sighted person and ran ahead with confidence; mercilessly bullied by students and teachers; there is plenty to relate too.  I would recommend this very highly, not only for its incredible dev factor but also because he writes so beautifully.

Heartsight

Heartsight by Kay Springsteen

This is a great story. We join Dan as another operation to try and restore his sight fails. He lives in isolation in a magnificent house on a beach. His life is forcibly changed when he crosses paths with Bella, a young child with downs syndrome. He is imediately struck by the child and her mother. Slowly a friendship between the three develops. There is great exposition subtly inlayed within the narrative. Dan is a great strong character and Trish, the mother, is great as she is 'normal' in that she isn't a femme fetal but an ordinary woman with insecurities over the way see looks.

The story takes off but I wouldn't want to spoil it by giving anything away.

The Devo factor is ever present and Dan, although very resentful at the start of the book, learns to live positivly with his disability.  He doesn't regain his sight and by the end it is clear that there will never be a chance to correct his eyes.

There aren't really any sex scenes but this fits into the story quite well concidering the bagage the characters are carrying around.  Wold give this book 9/10.

Holiday Inn

Holiday Inn (romance short story anthology)
NO STARS

The only story in this anthology I was interested in was the first one, "Love's Light" by Linda Jones. Set in colonial New Hampshire around the time of the revolution. Alexander Stark is blinded in the fighting, and returns home to the family inn to recover. This sounded so promising, right? I was excited, and the reviews on Amazon were so positive. WRONG. There is a miracle cure about halfway through. ARG! I usually can tell when this is coming, it's not often I'm taken by surprise like this. SO disappointing.

Oh yeah, and the plot is almost exactly the same as Blind Obsession reviewed above this: girl who he thinks jilted him comes back under an assumed name, thinks she won't recognize her because he's blind, blah blah blah what a ridiculous plot device.

Blind Obsession

Blind Obsession by Lee Wilkinson

NO STARS

Modern-day romance, set in England

As a teenager, Autumn fell in love with her fabulously wealthy older neighbor Saul, but things went badly. He crashed his car after an argument with her, and the accident left him blind, seemingly forever. Autumn flees to the US to escape her guilt, and Saul becomes a famous novelist or something. At the start of the novel, Autumn, now 22, returns to London and interviews for a job as Saul's secretary with a fake name, as part of some half-baked plan to be near him and see if he still hates her. Before she realizes what's happened, he gives her the job and whisks her off to a remote cottage in the Yorkshire moors, supposedly to help him finish his next novel. Alone together for weeks, how long will it be before Saul figures out Autumn's true identity? And is he still angry at her for causing his accident?

Spoilers: not long, and yes. This is one of the most sexist romance novels I have ever read. Even though it was written in the 1990s, it reads like it's set in the early 1960s. Saul basically tortures, abuses, and rapes Autumn into submission (ok technically not rape because the narrator keeps telling us how much she wants him, but she's still telling him no). There's no question for either Autumn or Saul that she really is responsible for his accident because she made him angry, and that she now deserves all the psychological abuse he heaps on her. Her response is to love him even more in hopes that he will remember her good qualities too. Wow, classic battered wife syndrome: "He only hits me because I deserve it, and it's a sign of how much he cares." This really made me sick.

Saul is spiteful and mean. The description of his blindness is utterly fake and unconvincing. Then about halfway through, it turns out he got his sight back already. He was just faking it to make Autumn feel even worse.  I suffered through this crappy, horrible book and he wasn't even blind!! I feel totally cheated.

Blind Attraction

Blind Attraction by Myrna Mackenzie
*

Wow, this was a terrible book. I was really disappointed, because it had so much potential. Handsome young inventor, blind since birth, and a book that is a romance/sci fi/suspense hybrid, sounds intriguing. But no, it fails on every level.

First, as believable fiction. All the characters are completely flat, and act and speak like no human ever would. The story seems to take place in some alternate world where orphanages dot the landscape as if it were 19th century England, but the abandoned children there grow into genius multi-millionaire inventors who live in houses with armies of servants and supermodel social workers (our hero and heroine). Alyssa quits her modeling career to become the caretaker/head cook of the orphanage Conor funds. Seriously, what is up with the orphanages? Note to author: for the past 50 years, orphanages have been replaced with foster care and group homes in the United States. Oh and realism in the representation of blindness? Zero. Several times Conor even "looks" at people, what lazy writing. There's no miracle cure, but still the devo factor is low.

Second, as romance. Not only were the characters totally flat, they were weirdly obsessed with pregnancy and children. The big conflict is that Conor feels he will be "donating flawed genetic material" (he actually uses that phrase several times) and believes he should never reproduce, which he assumes Alyssa not only wants but deserves as an attractive woman. Ok, marriage (and eventually children) is the main goal of most romance fiction, but even in the rarified world of romance novels, the characters don't usually start discussing their reproductive plans on the first date, and then obsessively thereafter every time they even think about having sex. It's creepy and weird. Even creepier: what begins to change Conor's mind is sitting next to a heavily pregnant woman on an airplane who talks loudly to her fetus during the flight. WTF?!? I also couldn't take the extreme sexism inherent in the story. Conor is contacted by his genius family to help find the genius bad guys, placing him in extreme danger and under unbearable stress for some reason. To help him, Alyssa leaves the orphanage to move in with Conor in order to service him sexually and see that he eats and sleeps regularly, in other words, to take care of the female stuff while he does his manly man work, even though he does have a house full of servants (again with the 19th century lingo). And it's not just that, she's so passive around him, even "tilting her head up to be kissed" rather than kissing him herself. It's actually quite rare to find romances from the past 15 years this blatantly sexist, I was surprised.

Finally, as suspense. Like a lot of poorly-written romances, NOTHING HAPPENS (except some awkward sex scenes shoved into the plot at the requisite 1/3 and 2/3 marks). The backstory of the genius family is barely fleshed out; the main bad guy's crime is something called the World Bank Heist (seriously, that was the best you could come up with?). For all the talk of the EXTREME DANGER Conor and by extension everyone else is in, nothing ever happens, not even the slightest hint of a real threat. Once the romance part of the plot is resolved, the suspense part disappears completely. I thought there were pages missing at the end. Maybe the next installment takes up the gripping mystery of the WBH (they seriously call it that) but I can't be bothered to check.

This book is part of a series called Family Secrets, which seems like a genius marketing move: come up with an overarching suspense/romance story, and have a bunch of different authors write each installment, meaning that there is one installment published every month. It's much faster than any single author could write. But the quality of the writing is so amateurish, and it's clear this author didn't have any connection to the larger narrative. Even the cover is half-assed--why is there a picture of Conor playing a piano? He never does in the novel. It's like they got blind-guy clipart for the cover. Just one more indication that nobody cared about the quality of this book.