Night Whispers
I'm a bit out of my genre here, and I'm seriously not a romance fan (unless of course it's slash fanfiction), so take that as context, if you will, for the two stars. I pretty much rolled my eyes through most of the characterization - it all seemed incredibly light and fluffy, and then the sheer wallowing in the depiction of the lives of the wealthy made me slightly nauseous. However, just as I was about to throw in the towel, we actually got some plot (praise the literary gods!), and the resolution of the relative state of guilt of the various characters was done with reasonable aplomb. I still object to the whole spunky-girl-is-blown-away-by-her-hormonal-reaction-to-domineering-male plot though. Charlotte Bronte did it first and best; no need to constantly recycle it, and I think there are more than enough questions left at the end of the novel about exactly what Mr. Noah Maitland does for a living that any sensible woman would give him a wide berth, regardless of whether anything could be proved against him. But then, I also frowned and said, "stupid choice" when she fell into bed with him right after discovering a loaded machine gun amongst a cache of weapons on his private yacht. So there you go. McNaught also carefully avoided, in her short and sappy epilogue, the question of whether Sloan Reynolds, apparently a highly skilled police officer, abandoned her career when she got her happy-ever-after with her incredibly wealthy husband. I just have this sickening feeling we are to assume she did.
So much for too-quick selection of subway reading at dollar-a-go church book sales. I was fooled by the "breathtaking suspense and harrowing plot twists" advertised on the back cover. Oh well, at least I saved a bit of time by skipping the entirely superfluous sex scenes.
