Come Near Me

Rating:
Summary: Kasey Michaels stumbles on this tale
Review: I normally love Kasey Michaels and several of her books are in my "keeper" romance collection. I admire her ability to construct a story, often largely through witty dialogue, that moves quickly and enjoyably. She is able to rapidly sketch out characters who become real and believable. I also enjoy stories with supernatural characters, such as ghosts and fairy godmothers who are deus ex machina types. Therefore, Michaels' books are often among my favorites, but this book would not be included among them. This book has far less of Michaels' renowned dialogue and humor. Most importantly, it was impossible for me to perform the necessary suspension of disbelief to buy into the story of the devil interfering in the "perfect"love of the main couple. I also found the "flashback" device annoying and ineffective. I ended up skimming through the last 1/2 of the book to get to the end just to finish it, although I should have saved my time and just stopped at the halfway point.

Rating:
Summary: An A-plot involving the devil? Get real!
Review: I'd recently read one of Kasey Michaels' short stories and been delighted with her wit and fun dialogue, so I decided to pick up one of her full-length novels. Was I ever in for a disappointment.

The heroine is childish and has some of the worst dialogue I've ever seen. In the flashbacks I believe she was 17, but she sounded about 10. Her familiarity with the hero was absolutely ridiculous, even if she was just a country miss. Yes, maybe she was immature and had matured between the flashbacks and the real story, and you could definitely see a difference between her attitude and actions and even dialogue between those parts. But then why torture us with the flashbacks??? While it was necessary to know some of the details contained in them, reading them was torture.

Although the heroine could be annoying, she was *nothing* compared to the A-plot. Apparently the devil has decided that he's bored, and, look, there's this display of perfect love! Great, so he can just come down to earth with the sole purpose of destroying it. This sound farfetched to anyone else? I kept hoping against hope that the real explanation would be something much more normal, but no.

I definitely don't recommend this book. Based on the one short story of Michaels' that I loved, called "The Ninth Miss Noddenly" I believe, I may try one of her other books. I just hope she can manage an A-plot that's a little more down to Earth (or at least makes a bit more sense).

Rating:
Summary: Ugh!
Review: Maybe this book got better at the end, but I wouldn't know. At first I was just skipping the BORING flashbacks, then I quit all of it. Too many evil characters. A depressing hero. A childish heroine. I just wanted the devil to send them all to purgatory and spare me this hellish story.