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"Start at the toes...Tighten, tighten...Rebuild. Rebuild..." --I cannot tell you how many times the author had her horribly insecure heroine speaking those lines in her head as a calming exercise, but it was about 50 too many. Why have a heroine who was called a fierce businesswoman, who was an Olympian medal winner, and who owned and ran a major newspaper in Chicago be such a TOTAL emotional and insecure wreck and constantly allow herself to be manipulated??? It not only baffled, but produced a miserable book.

The hero was said to run a security specialist company, but he was really a wuss and the bad guys-in both the sabotage of their relationship and in committing crimes-were blatantly obvious. The romance was lackluster and every characters was hollow, unimpressive and just darn unlikable.

The narrator was annoying. Her speaking tone was really too old for this book and she gave the hero an awful whispery soft-spoken voice.

This book kept jumping around in time and came off as jumbled and choppy. It would take me a while to even realize the timetable had changed and I often forgot who characters were. The narrator's voices were very similar and didn't help the situation.

The first part of the plot was a little interesting, but the second part brought what little spark there was down and the ending was just lame. The heroine spent far too much time emoting and the hero was quite unremarkable.

Started out entertaining enough but quickly lost its charm when the author put in way too much description of mundane everyday details. Also, the heroine's painful past was explained too late in the story, and since the whole book (and the heroine's odd behavior) centered on this painful past, I spent a lot of time being annoyed by her instead of sympathizing with her. The hero was a bit too tied to his parent's apron strings, actually the whole cast of characters (including the narrator) acted as if the hero/heroine were around fifteen or sixteen. Just not to my liking.

The narrator's regional accents (Louisiana Bayou/Boston) are really, really bad and take away from a fun story full of quirky characters. The heroine whines a little too much because she's relationship-insecure, but I reread this story at least once a year and since I possibly like one book out of every hundred, I'd call it a keeper.

I should have listened to the previous reviewer about the heroine being so terribly childish (Amazon.com). I not only found her unlikable, but the whole book as well. The hero wasn't impressive and the story drug on and on stating the same things over and over until I wanted to scream in frustration. In fact, I think I did. I also didn't care for the narrator. She had this monotonous and nasally-thing going for both males and females.

There was not one character I found likable--she was too spineless, he was too nice, and all their family members were horrid.

There was not one part of the story I found likable--They fell in love immediately, I got tired of hearing about his disability, I got tired of her putting off telling him who she was (though it would have been obvious to even a blind man,) I got tired of all their repetitious internal dialog, and I got tired of looking for even a hint of humor and finding none.

Narrator was unbelievably dull.

This was more of a drawn out tale about single parents raising teenage children. There were brief mentions of a comic-book style villain and the "showdown" ending was unfortunately very, very lame.

Ninety-five percent of this book consisted of the characters talking or thinking...repetitive words and/or thoughts. Only five percent was anyone actually DOING anything. The sad part was that the five percent was quite enjoyable--however, it was just too little to carry the story. Narrator was good though and helped me make it to the end.

OMGosh! How stupid can one woman be??? But first, know that this book was 95 percent repeated ramblings of the heroine's inner thoughts. It became teeth-grinding to get through most of it as boring doesn't come close to describing it. The other 5 percent mainly takes place at the end and is very, very rushed. I CANNOT BELIEVE this was written by the same author who wrote HEART OF FIRE and AFTER THE NIGHT--both very enjoyable and well spaced tales.

I liked nothing about this book...ESPECIALLY the selfish and judgmental heroine. She constantly gives herself over to her inner trashy side, all the while turning her back on and thumbing her nose at her slightly seedy family and past. She did not deserve the hero and I have no idea why he even wanted her--besides their energetic monkey sex. Also, this book moved at a snail's pace with WAY too much of the heroine's inner pondering and the narrator was as annoying as the heroine she portrayed. Total waste of time and money.

Heroine detracted from the story as she was never fleshed out--even the dog had more presence than she did. She was kind of like plain wallpaper, there, yet adding only to the surface. I thought she was going to finally come to life near the end when the author gave her a few moments to show her backbone, but as soon as the scene ended she went back to being wallpaper. It didn't help that the voice the narrator gave her was a squeaky little girl's voice.

The story itself was "okay"--nice guy finding his way through heartache to his place in life--but doubt I'd bother listening to it again. The narrator used a strong Scottish burr which seemed to fit the story in general.