I have to admit, I was completely mislead by the back cover.  I assumed Betrayals by Carla Neggers (originally published under the pen name Anne Harrell) would be an exciting story of pursuit.  Pursuit of the invaluable Jupiter Stones - priceless jewels that our main character caught a quick glimpse of, as a young girl.  And with the title "Betrayals" I figured I'd get some exciting drama along the way, where people would do practically anything to get their hands on something so valuable.

Well, I was only half right.  There are, indeed, betrayals in this book.  Plenty of back-stabs, and double-crosses.  But it's really not a pursuit of jewels, but rather, a pursuit of answers - of long-buried secrets that drives the characters in this book.

With a ridiculous number of characters, and a lack of character development, this is a very hard book to get into.  In fact, it would benefit greatly from a picture showing the various family trees that are involved in this story.  In the first few chapters, the number of characters that are introduced is staggering.  And, they span several families, and we are introduced to them in bits and pieces jumping around in time as well as geography.  From both coasts of the United States to Indochina, and over 30 years, we are given a ton of information very quickly.  A bit too quickly, frankly.  I stuck with it, but I had to go back quite a few times, to remind myself who was who.  I can well understand if someone just gives up, not wanting to deal with so many people and situations thrown at them all at once.

Once you get past the difficult start, this book remains just OK.  There are some exciting parts, and I admit that I did want to know how it all works out in the end.  Mostly I was interested to find out exactly what happened, thirty years ago.  The details of this part of the story are handed out in little pieces, and I was intrigued to put the entire puzzle together.

But, overall, the story wasn't anything great.  The characters are, at times, overly nasty to each other.  Even when things are eventually explained, and reasons given for some of the animosity, I still felt like people were not particularly nice in this book.  There were times when a character is just so nasty that I found myself wishing ill-will towards that person.  And those were the god guys!  This brings the book down a notch in my opinion.

Worst of all was a very disappointing ending, one that relies a little too much on coincidence rather than smart writing.  It's like the author backed herself into a corner and had to find a quick, cheap way to get out.

Overall, I would call this book "ok" but nothing special at all.  I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to buy it.  If you find it lying around, pick it up, but draw yourself a family tree to help keep the characters straight in the beginning.

Recommended: No