Love Me True

Rating:
Summary: This is a fantastic read!
Review: I loved the characters and the setting! This story has a great balance of fine characterization, setting, romance, and suspense. Ann Major is great when it comes to writing stories about reunited lovers. Many thanks, Ann!

Rating:
Summary: This is a fantastic read!
Review: I loved this book. It is a hot, sexy, rip-roaring fantasy about reunited lovers who have everything but each other. I loved Joey and Heather. I don't read romance for a dose of reality. I read it to dream. Great read, Ann!

Rating:
Summary: Three Cheers for Another Excellent Read!
Review: I loved this book. It is a hot, sexy, rip-roaring fantasy about reunited lovers who have everything but each other. I loved Joey and Heather. I don't read romance for a dose of reality. I read it to dream. Great read, Ann!

Rating:
Summary: A contemporary romance that takes itself too seriously
Review: LOVE ME TRUE lacks the one major component that could make it a really fun novel--humor. Its characters are extremely unpleasant and logistics poorly considered. The pivot points in the plotline are so contrived the only way they'd work would be in parody.

Joey Fasano and Heather Wade were teen-age lovers, as were his sister and her brother. Heather's father was an ambitious senator while Joey's was a drunk who came from the wrong side of the tracks. Heather's brother was killed in an accident and her family blamed Joey. When she miscarried Joey's child, her family severed her relationship with him altogether. Six years later, Joey is a world-famous, Oscar-winning actor and aches with loneliness despite all the women who chase him. Heather is a Pulitzer prize-winning photographer about to marry someone who better satisfies her parents. Joey sees news reports of her impending marriage and pictures of her with her five-year-old son, Nicky, who looks remarkably like him. He rudely dumps his current pushy paramour to see his former lover again.

The way Joey and Heather treat each other is horrible. Many readers expect arguments arising from the sexual tension the principals are dealing with, but there is nothing appealing in the way he shouts orders at her. He is so domineering, why would any modern American woman want him? It's also hard to accept how unaware Joey is of major events that happen within his own family.

Heather's incessant inability "to think clearly in a crisis" is the big trait of hers that stands out. Most readers gravitate toward the woman's point of view in a romance novel, yet this one gives the reader little of what's going on in Heather's head. She is so cruel in her passiveness and there is no acceptable justification for it. She has some growth in the end when she finally takes control of her life, but it is obfuscated.

The plot miraculously reveals a big secret or major factor at each crisis point without any foreshadowing. Hence, it is a story that is so contrived the only way it would be successful would be if these revelations were exploited even more and turned into a parody. There are no laughs in this plot.

This 1999 novel poorly depicts these characters as prize-winning professionals. There is absolutely no sense of the time, work, or dedication it took for both of them to reach such lofty levels in their crafts, especially at such early ages. Both are superficial characters given attractive traits. So little personal information is provided about them, no one can guess if they'd like strawberry cheesecake or the music of Edgar Elgar.

LOVE ME TRUE is a story that could have been very entertaining if it was approached with a keen sense of humor. Unfortunately, it takes itself seriously.