Review
I read reviews of this book before I bought it and I decided that I would wait to purchase it until I had extra money because most of the reviews were scathing and I found very few intelligent ones that had anything positive to say. Usually that would turn me off completely but I own every single Anderson novel I could get my hands on so I decided to give it a chance. I ended up having the extra money, I bought it and I read it over the next few days.
I should have spent it on something more worthwhile. It's no surprise that Amazon is offering this book for $4.10 now. It's not her strongest and it's a shame because it really should have been good. I liked the concept but the execution was extremely flawed.
The older brother from <em>Sun Kissed</em>'s heroine Samantha Harrigan (I just knew as soon as it was clear Sam had older bachelor brothers we'd be seeing them) Clint is the hero here and his counterpart is Loni McEwan, a girl with psychic abilities. She's been dreaming about Clint her whole life and gets a shocking flash of a little boy she's sure is his son lost in the woods and only Clint can save him. Of course, Clint is a stand up Catholic boy and doesn't believe in psychics.
I was looking forward to the idea of having a hero be somewhat religious and unwilling to believe in the heroine at first. I thought it would be refreshing as a lot of authors just don't touch on religion at all but they went from not believing to believing very fast and before you knew it, they were in the woods searching. Two days later, they're engaged.
I have no problem with relationships that move fast. I'm a huge fan of Jennifer Crusie and almost of all her couples get together within a month's time, if not less (two days is also her record I believe) but I guess I just didn't believe that Clint and Loni were in love. I definitely think he wanted to sleep with her but I just didn't get the lifetime love thing that fast.
Of course, that's not the happy ending. Loni, like a lot of Anderson's female protagonists, run off towards the end and the hero has to go after her. It happened in <em>Phantom Waltz</em>, <em>Blue Skies</em>, <em>My Sunshine</e> and probably one or two more I can't think of. I believed it in <em>My Sunshine</em>. It's my second favorite Anderson and in <em>Phantom Waltz</em>, I swallowed it because it made sense. I was tired of it in <em>Blue Skies</em> and by the time this one ran off, I was thinking, <em>Jeez, just let her go. Find someone who doesn't run when things get tough. </em> Seriously.
More Anderson trademarks that have me weary are the old fashioned fathers like Clint's father (I can't remember his name off hand) and interfering families (Loni's mother, sister and grandmother). It's almost a repeat of half the books in the Coulter series and I'm hoping these aren't around for the next ones. It just get olds after a while.
I was so disappointed in this but I hope that the next book from Catherine Anderson will restore my faith in her because she's one of my favorite authors and I suppose everyone has a misstep. IThe book was still well written and there were pieces I liked like Clint's relationship with his new found son so I didn't hate it, hence the C+ grade. A book with a promising premise but a terribly flawed execution.