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Rating: 
Summary: Above average formula
Review: A starter book for readers and writers of lesbian fiction. Hard to really get close to the characters - I finished it mainly for my own sense of closure. Viable situation, but the book needed more character development. Seemed like a story sketched out pretty well but not worked fully. The antagonist was not "large enough," and the steps taken to counter the antagonist were naive. I will probably read more Jackie Calhoun, but more from her reputation than this particular book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not worh your time
Review: At one point I actually threw this novel (if you want to call this a novel) across the room. From the very beginning I found the story flimsy, unbelievable, shallow and poorly written. I'm disappointed with such a well-known author as Calhoun. The characters are never really fleshed out! The story opens when the main character walks in on her lover with another woman--she packs her bags and leaves to return to a cabin on a lake to live with her gay brother. Because we know nothing about her life with this lover, I felt this plot was only contrived to "get" the main character to move to the cabin. Once she finds a niche living in this cabin on a lake she meets the married neighbor and before long they are in the sack together. What a surprise this was to me! There was no simmering, seductioin, or any apparent attraction at all! It just happened. Sure, I see the possibilities of an interesting story here and I never finished the book BUT--I hate it when a woman's lesbian sexuality is due to the fact that she has/had an abusive husband/boyfriend. I cannot recommend this book to anyone--there are so many other great novels to spend the evening with.
Rating:
Summary: Not worh your time
Review: At one point I actually threw this novel (if you want to call this a novel) across the room. From the very beginning I found the story flimsy, unbelievable, shallow and poorly written. I'm disappointed with such a well-known author as Calhoun. The characters are never really fleshed out! The story opens when the main character walks in on her lover with another woman--she packs her bags and leaves to return to a cabin on a lake to live with her gay brother. Because we know nothing about her life with this lover, I felt this plot was only contrived to "get" the main character to move to the cabin. Once she finds a niche living in this cabin on a lake she meets the married neighbor and before long they are in the sack together. What a surprise this was to me! There was no simmering, seductioin, or any apparent attraction at all! It just happened. Sure, I see the possibilities of an interesting story here and I never finished the book BUT--I hate it when a woman's lesbian sexuality is due to the fact that she has/had an abusive husband/boyfriend. I cannot recommend this book to anyone--there are so many other great novels to spend the evening with.
Rating:
Summary: Maybe even a 2
Review: This is definitely NOT one of Jackie Calhoun's best books. Calhoun creates one of the great mistakes in literature, you don't care about the characters at the end of the book. Carly, who discovered her lebianism late in life, comes home to find her younger lover in bed with another woman. She runs off to live in the family home at Tamarak Creek with her gay brother and meets the new neighbors, Serena, also a lesbian, and her abusive husband Jess. Carly and Serena start an affair, threatened and made violent by Jess. Reads like pretty powerful stuff. The problem is that you can't develop any connection to the characters and there's no passion except when Jess is nearly killing one or both of the women. It took me three days to plod through 204 pages. For a contrast, read Love's Melody Lost by Radcliffe. Ironically, it's only 187 pages, but, by the end of it, you really care about what is going to happen to the central characters. Jackie Calhoun, who can be an excellent writer, should read that book to get herself back on track.
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