Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful and somewhat disturbing.
Review: Belinda was one of those books that I picked up on a whim, and I am glad that I did. Pedophilia isn't something I condone, mind you, but it does make for an interesting read. The characters are a bit underdeveloped for my taste, and I didn't much care for the blase attitude of Belinda herself. However, that is an integral part of why this book was hard to put down. As an Anne Rice fan, this book strikes me as an odd duck when looking into the rest of her novels, but it does somehow round out the collection. Not the most highly recommended, but still engaging enough to rate 4 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Belinda is amazing..
Review: I loved this book. I myself am 16 and I'd never have a relationship with someone who was that much older than me but to read about it kinda fills in that blank. It's a fantasy come true in this story. At times I hated Belinda and at other times i loved her, and all of her friends/family were equally real. Just because there was no real hard core sex in it dosn't mean it's not erotic! I found it very sexy without having to have TOO MANY details. I think many people would love this book if they gave it a chance. And also, why, if you hate the story, whould you want to read all 500 pages of it? i'd give up if i disliked it THAT much...
Rating:
Summary: Give in to the seduction!
Review: I first read this book about ten years ago, and it really had an effect on me. What I loved most about the story, was that Jeremy and Belinda despite all, really loved each other. I guess I am a sap, oh well.... Jeremy is a sexy man, but I could have never have fallen for him if I were sixteen, I couldn't even get a date then! Belinda is a great character, smart and seductive. It's just a story, so relax!!!
Rating:
Summary: Would people stop with the negativity?????
Review: I don't know if people just live to be negative and read books just to bash them (*coughszellycoughs*) but really i enjoyed this book. i always read the review of the customers before i go out and buy a book, and so i came across zelly's eventful bashing of the book and decided against it. the book was given to me as a given because i love anne rice, and so i gathered my courage and read the book. boy was i suprised. i was skeptical about it, i at first thought it was disgusting, a 44 year old and a 16 year old?? but really i got caught up in the hype right away. of course it's unbelievable! it's fiction! it's meant to take you away into a different world where things happen that can't happen in the real world. think of it as fantasy if you want to. i was totally lost in the book. i felt like i was part of it. i for one did not read it for the sex, in fact sex wasn't even part of it. i roll my eyes at the thought, really. i think anne did a good job of story telling it, and for a few moments i actually thought jeremy and belinda were actually in love love love. but then i realized it was just abook. i forget at times that their age gap is so big, i don't even think of it until they mention it in the book. and the remark zelly made about how it mentions everyone is beautiful every other line, well really it's how anne rice writes! i guess it's because i'm an artist and writer myself, but some people just see the human form and think it's beautiful. one can see beauty almost anymore. i can look at an old woman and her wrinkles and wisdom and say that's beautiful. a woman is beautiful, so is a man, it's all on how you see it. and if this were to be made into a movie, perhaps the characters wouldn't be all god glorifying beautiful but some would see it so. i thought the book was beautifully written, the plot was engrossing, and it actually gave closure. it was long and perfect for a lazy day's reading, not like those cheap novels you buy at the super market under 300 pages long. it was one of anne rice's better books, i believe. so take my advice, if a review does not at least say one good thing about the book don't believe it. chances are it's just one of those critic wanna bes who want to say only negative things about everything. make your own opinion after you read it, and if you don't wanna slap down the money go to a library!
Rating: 
Summary: Not Anne's best work
Review: I love Anne's vampire novels (well, three of them anyway), and I've found her other books to vary in quality. Belinda ranks toward the bottom of the spectrum -- it's easy to tell it's one of her early works. I didn't find the Belinda character realistic at all; I suppose when writing fiction authors often try to convey a "fantasy self", someone worldly yet naive and beautiful. Perhaps Belinda is what Anne wanted to be once. She seems just too perfect to exist. The romance between her and Jeremy I also found implausible, not to mention a bit unnerving given the age difference. Read The Mummy, Feast of all Saints, and the first three Vampire books for Anne's best work. Skip this one.
Rating:
Summary: The Ultimate in Passionate Book
Review: Anne Rice's Belinda is one of the most erotic books I've ever read. The characters are well described and you feel like you get to know the characters really well. The sex was not a bore in fact it was passionate and deep. All in all this was a great book with a great love story and a great conflict.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of depth for an Eighties "trash" novel
Review: I don't get the comparisons to Judith Krantz and Danielle Steele that some have used in reviewing "Belinda." Yes, it's a story about a middle-age man and a teen-age child/woman (guess which one was more mature?) set in the 1980s. But it was about so much more, about love forbidden, about how mothers hurt their children and how children bounce back and become better than their selfish mothers. I don't think this should be read as condoning such relationships in general, but as a story in its own right about a child forced to grow up too fast, who falls in love with a man who has never really grown up, and helps him grow to his full potential, too. The only hard part, for me, was remembering that I was reading a novel written some 15 years ago. For example, I was perplexed at first that AIDS rumors could kill G.G.'s New York salon, until I remembered this novel was written and set in a time when AIDS was not even treatable, when we didn't fully even understand how it spread. (Remember those rumors that mosquitoes spread AIDS? If that were true, we'd ALL be infected by now. But I digress.) Anyway, if you read it as good fiction with some meaning, you'll love it!
Rating:
Summary: Much more than I expected
Review: I picked BELINDA up almost on a lark, since I don't generally seek out "erotic" novels, and Ms. Rice's vampire books -- although I know many people who absolutely love them -- didn't appeal to me. I was delighted to find myself immediately sucked into the story, in large part due to Ms. Rice's rich, lush prose and complex characterizations. Yes, this is very "eighties", with its big, glitzy, Hollywood-set plot, but the crux of the story is timeless. But what most amazed me was the astounding believeability of the love story, a feat only possible because of Ms. Rice's extraordinary sensitivity for and insight into her two main characters. Circumstances have made Belinda, the child-woman, far too old for her sixteen years; and yet, somehow, there's an almost translucent innocence about her, an ingenuousness, that has managed to remain intact despite her most unchildlike childhood. And for all Jeremy Walker's human fraility and weakness, he is at heart a true Southern gentlemen -- in his own idiosycratic way. As Jeremy puts it, he and Belinda are "in synochronicity" with each other -- each has something else the other desperately needs: the ability to grant personal freedom from the lies and deception each has been living with for years, the freedom to finally be who they really are. Although I did, at times, find myself wishing the pace had been a bit tighter, all in all, I was very, very impressed. And by the way, even though some consider this "erotica", compared with many books now being published, the actually love scenes were fairly tame. Granted, the subject matter itself will undoubtedly make some people cringe -- and, indeed, the issue of Jeremy's relationship with an underage girl is at the heart of the plot (although in a historical novel, a marriage between a man in his forties to a teenaged girl wouldn't be considered abnormal at all!) -- but if you're expecting blatant titillation, you won't find it here. What you'll find instead is a beautifully crafted, sensitive study of art and life and love and even reality. I'm so glad I acted on my impulse.
Rating:
Summary: this book was amazing
Review: As an avid Anne Rice reader, I thought this book was amazing. I picked this book up for the hell of it, not expecting one of Rice's "erotic" novels to have much quality in it at all. But I was blown away from the first page. For those of you who might say that Jeremy was just a "horn dog" eager to get in Belinda's pants whenever he could, you obviously missed something. The point was that Belinda was not 16, just as Mona Mayfair was not 13. The beauty of this book is in the depth of love and art and mystery. It was so beautiful at times that it made my heart ache. And so I recommend this book to anyone, it's fabulous!
Rating: 
Summary: A would-be sexy detective story
Review: I've never read such a book, I think that the plot is divided into two parts: the first is the would-be sevy one, and the other a very detective story. I do think the author wants deliberately to mislead the reader, as she divedes the story into two distictive parts; however this book risults to be very descriptive, somtime difficult to follow, as the plot entagles with Jeremy's wanton to posses this baby-girl, and the unkwown Belinda's family roots. The weakest point of this book is the final part of it, unfortunately as you go on reading you can see that the story is reasonably flat, and the end cheats the reader. I can finally say that Anne Rice, has tried with this book to write a "sexy detective" story, which is quite interesting, but in my opinion she sould have another go.
|
