( 5 reviews )
-
( 2 of 2 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jan 3 2006
Anthologies are always hard to rate because of the varying stories, and this one is no different. "A PERFECT FIT". I really found the first story so dull and slow-moving that I didn't even finish it. In it, a middle-aged woman who had a daughter out of wedlock is desperately trying to give her spoiled daughter a respectable wedding to a man of higher social standing. While the wedding is set, the girl doesn't have a wedding dress...the groom's mother thinks the family are social climbers so she sends Viscount Forde (the groom's uncle, I believe) to suss out the situation and get rid of the bride. While Catherine Anderson tries to create a mix of humor and tension through her characters and plot, she falls far short of the goal. In the end, their relationship is uninspiring, the plot is slow-moving and boring and, you're not really left rooting for anyone. "GLAD RAGS" Connie Brockaway's "Glad Rags," immediately had me wondering why I've never read anything else by her. In it, we meet Alex, Viscount Thorpe, a war hero recently returned home from Russia and his erstwhile love, Lucy St. James. Two years before the story takes place, Alex and Lucy had an unofficial engagement but it was suddenly and publically broken when Lucy flirted with another man and Alex rejected her. Lucy's brother, Hugh, is convinced that Alex's actions have condemned Lucy to a life of spinsterhood so, out of revenge, he wins a bet against Alex and forces him to wear a dress in front of a ton party. Although Alex and Lucy haven't talked since his return to England, she feels compelled to speak with him considering it was her brother who put them into their predicament. I love the witty, sophisticated dialogue that Brockaway employs. These characters make you laugh and cringe, because their love is apparent even after years apart but their pride--which got them in trouble in the first place--is understandable. In the end, Brockaway creates tension and a powerful love that has you hoping and praying these two will figure everything out and, for the love of God, just swallow their pride. This one is truly the gem of the anthology. "SOMETHING SPECIAL" This one, again, is a story that wasn't all that spectacular, it's really what'd you'd expect from an anthology. Eliza is an intelligent ten-year-old girl who lives with her bachelor father in 1850's Seattle. With the help of a local widow, Eliza brings Penny, an uneducated girl from Boston, to Seattle to be her governess, but really hopes she'll be her new mother. The father, Joshua, returns from a three-moth business trip and is immediately attracted to Penny but resists the attraction--or tries to. While the characters are pleasant and the story was relatively entertaining, I hate stories like this because the romance seems to develop out of nowhere. The hero and heroine are physically attracted to one another and then, suddenly, they decide they're in love. Some authors can make this work, but Casey Claybourne is not one of them. "BEAUTIFUL GIFTS" The final story starts out rather slowly and, I honestly felt my eyes glazing over after the first three pages...I didn't finish this one, so, besides that, I can't offer an opinion. In short, it's an alright book that would really have just been incredibly mediocre if it hadn't been for Brockaway and "Glad Rags." I'll definitely be looking for more books by her in the future.
-
( 1 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Dec 4 2005
I loved all of the stories in this anthology because of the special and magical plot about the dress. My very favorite has to be GLAD RAGS by Connie Brockway though because she gave that plot a very funny twist. I don't want to give it away because it's so cute but I can say that only Ms. Brockway (and maybe Cary Grant) could have pulled it off!
-
( 2 of 2 found this review helpful ) Posted: Dec 4 2005
I'm kind of sick of anthologies that have two good stories and three bad ones, but this antho is enough to change my mind. First of all, I loved the Brockway one called Glad Rags. Because it was hot: the hero is totally in lust, but he's going off to war, and he doesn't want to leave the heroine alone if he dies. So he backs out of the marriage--and I was DYING for him to come back and make love. Which he does. Fabulous story. I really liked the other ones too, although they don't stand out quite as clearly -- but this is one of those anthologies where I kept reading right through all of them. That almost never happens for me. I highly recommend this one!
