Ice Blue

By: Anne Stuart

Narrated by: Gabra Zackman

Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's Summary

Museum curator Summer Hawthorne considered the exquisite ice-blue ceramic bowl given to her by her beloved Japanese nanny a treasure of sentimental value, until somebody tried to kill her for it.

The priceless relic is about to ignite a global power struggle that must be stopped at all costs. It's a desperate situation, and international operative Takashi O'Brien has received his directive: everybody is expendable. Everybody. Especially the woman who is getting dangerously under his skin as the lethal game crosses the Pacific to the remote and beautiful mountains of Japan, where the truth can be as seductive as it is deadly.

©2007 Anne Stuart (P)2007 Audible, Inc.
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A. All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Critic Reviews

"Slick, sexy, and fast-paced, this is one of Stuart's best recent efforts. Taka is a singularly intriguing hero, and readers won't soon forget his love with Summer." (Romantic Times)

Intense

One of several related "Ice" stories from Anne Stuart about various "Committee members." This one involves operative Taka and a woman named Summer Hawthorne, who holds the key to finding a beautiful blue urn given to her by her nanny. A madman wants it, and Taka keeps her safe, while fighting his own orders to kill her. It is tense and gritty, and includes a hostage situation and a "chess game" of sorts using people's lives. This story is interesting, tense, tough, and full of suspense. It also has a good ending. Enjoy!

13 of 13 people found this review helpful

Stockholm Syndrome...at its worst!

Yuck, the main female lead character is so submissive you end up disliking her so much, and wanting to refer her to therapy to work out her ISSUES. She has a doctrite but is unable to figure things out. Summer, the main character falls for the guy who spends the first 5 hours of the book fantasizing about killing her in the quickest, least painful way. And ummm, he is merciful! I think I went into a fugue state because I never really felt the sincerity of the importance of the sacred object or the journey of the book. It just seemed like a book developed too quickly, and I like a bit more research in a story as well as a strong female characters. I was not endeared to any of the characters. The sex scenes seemed more like "she said no but means yes", due to the submissive nature of the Summer and the sexually confident Tako. There was so much more that could have been said, and having more dialogue might have helped (alot of thinking to themselves). This is a quick read that I will be quickly forgot and should have been bought at a used book store but not for the value of an audible.

I like the narrator. I will skip the other books in the series.

15 of 17 people found this review helpful

Say "blahblah" then repeat 3000 times

I almost never use one star, reserving it to mean the very worst a book can be. For Ice Blue, this rating is well deserved. It's a real stand-out in the abysmal category.

It's bad enough that the characters and events have no believability of any kind. But then Stuart repeats everything ad nauseum. How many dozens of times did she describe the male character's appearance? 30? 50? How many times are we told that he's ambivalent about the attraction? How many times do we have to hear that killing the "heroine" is the right thing to do? Killing the book is more like it, and once would have been sufficient. [How on earth does tripe like this get published?]

9 of 10 people found this review helpful

Awsome

I couldn't put this book down as hard as I tried. This book had very interesting characters especially Taka. The ending was a bit cheesy and rushed.Sometimes the inner thoughts of the characters were a bit repetetive but that was easily forgivable because of the exciting story and entertaining plot and people. loved it and I think anyone looking for a bit of excitement danger and romance would love this book.

8 of 9 people found this review helpful

Good plot, poor writing

This book has a reasonably interesting plot. It is marred by an enormous amount of repetitive writing, especially about the emotional feelings of the heroine. It also pays far too much attention to a ridiculous love affair, including a really disgusting, pornographic description of their sexual contact. It is far from being worth the time of listening it takes to come to the end.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Reader is Passable; But Pass on Reading This Book

The Ice Blue reviews I read made it seem like a well-written mystery. Well, I found it to be a sex-spiced "romance novel" (which in my book is a genre I prefer not to visit). Big letdown, but since I listened to it as an audio book instead of plowing through it reading I stuck to the end because the reader did a passable job. As far as rating - what I suggest to anyone who is considering reading this: just pass on to something else with more content.

3 of 4 people found this review helpful

Enough already!!

Too much unbelievale sex! Geesh! Decent storyline but had to fast forward through all the superhuman sex. Would have really liked the story if it wasn't for that. If you like a mystery filled with sex you'll like this story for sure.

4 of 6 people found this review helpful

Ice Blue

Sweet ending but the least entertaining of the "Ice" series. The plot was okay but the character developments were repetitive and mundane. Finally, and foremost, the narrator excelled at being monotone and boring. Please no repeat performances.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

Good book

Interesting story kept me listening and wanting to hear more.

3 of 5 people found this review helpful

Love this series. Not this book

This book was just not as exciting as the others in this series, unfortunately. I'll still keep listening to the rest of this series, though!