Spotlight

Rating:
Summary: A terrific book
Review: "Spotlight" is one of the best books of the year. I loved "Border Crossings", the author's first book, and "Spotlight", the second, is every bit as good. You simply cannot put it down. She captures the Irish experience as few others have.

Rating:
Summary: Sexy and suspenseful
Review: Carole Bellacera's exciting novel about a young, beautiful journalist and a rock star was delicious reading. Spotlight has a exciting and original plot as well as sexy characters. The suspense went up to the last minute and made it a great reading experience. Thanks Carole, keep 'em coming.

Rating:
Summary: Very Good But Hero Needs Rounded Development
Review: I enjoyed reading this novel and considered it well written and very good. However, the hero, Devin, is such a perfect person that I had trouble making him real in my mind. He is an Irish Catholic rock star who is more popular and better looking than Bono of U2. He gives most of his money away to peace seeking charities. He also has not had sex in several years since his wife was caught on an IRA terrorist mission as a perpetrator. Devin lives like a monk despite women literally ripping their clothes off in front of him and throwing themselves at him. The only bad things one can say about him are that he's moody sometimes and that he doesn't tell the heroine the whole truth about his life until forced to do so. By contrast, Bellacera's other novel featured a Trinity college professor as the lead, who had his priorities in life confused, and let his own stubbornness and misplaced loyalty get him deeper and deeper into the Irish Catholic cause at the peril of losing his wife and child. I preferred the intimate, human scale of "Border Crossings", with its well rounded hero, to the superstar setting of "Spotlight" and its superhuman hero. Nevertheless, Bellacera is a very good writer and wrote a rousing tale with "Spotlight".