Where's the fire?
Written: Mar 22 '02 (Updated Mar 22 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: It's a quick read.
Cons: Probably because there's really nothing engaging in the book.
The Bottom Line: No emotional involvement, no real excitement in the plot. No "fire" in the book with a fireman hero. Sad.
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| spalmero's Full Review: Once a Father Books |
I have stated more than once that I used to refuse to read series romance novels, because I assumed, like many do, that they were poorly written and full of trashy sex. Happily, I've found that those days are mostly past.
Instead, I've stumbled into something worse. Series romance novels that are, I think, so constrained by length that there's nothing to reach out and grab you, no hooks that get sunk into flesh and drag you along for the ride. As painful as the hooks sound, I'd rather have them than not.
Marie Ferrarella is a respected romance author. I try not to let reading one book by an author that doesn't appeal color my judgment. It's not always easy. In Once a Father, Ms. Ferrarella has written a book that could have been written about anyone in a bad situation. She's written a book I could, and did, put aside many times. She's written characters who were so average and every day that when bad things did happen, I still wasn't moved.
Here's the basic plot:
The chief of the local police force in Mission Creek is corrupt. He, apparently, has something against an ex-military type, and a member of the Lone Star Country Club, so he organizes a group of fellow police officers into 'the Lion's Den', a secret club. Together, they plot to blow this man up, by blowing up a portion of the club with him in it.
Of course it doesn't go that smoothly. The target isn't in the club. Instead, a family is destroyed. Mother and Father are killed by the blast. Little Jake, who'd wandered off to find the bathroom, spots men moving bags into a truck and is shooed away just before the explosion.
He's rescued by our hero, Adam Collins, who lost his wife and son to a blaze in his own home two years before. He's treated by pediatric burn specialist Tracy Walker, who after suffering a severe bout with endometriosis can't have kids. When Jake wakes up, he's mute, and has no family. Someone has to take care of him.
You see where this is going, right?
I like firefighters. No, I love firefighters. I respect the jobs they do, and hey, it doesn't hurt that I've never met a firefighter who's hard on the eyes. Adam, however, is so repressed, so reserved, and so flatly written that he bored me.
Tracy, with her irrepressible optimism and her patience with Jake, was fun, but the fact that she wanted to have anything to do with a man who spoke in four-word sentences at best was stretching it, to say the least.
And though Jake was, thankfully, not a five-year-old with a fifteen-year-old's vocabulary and manners, he wasn't much of anything. I guess that's to be expected with a character who doesn't speak for most of the book.
This is unfortunately one of those books that I would have preferred to have a strong reaction to, for better or for worse. Instead, I read it with a methodical turning of the pages. I'm disappointed. Disappointing is not what I look for in a book.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
spalmero
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Member: Sarah Palmero
Reviews written: 58
Trusted by: 10 members
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