Rating: 
Summary: Accomplished Author Tries Harlequin Romance
Review: This is a love story about a professional woman who may have just met the man of her dreams. Amy is an auctioneer, just turned 40, single, and dissatisfied with the relationships she has had with men. In her profession, she deals with collectibles and collectors. To put it bluntly, she manipulates bidders, with greater skill the better she knows them, making objects of them as well. Living in this objectifying environment, a strong part of Amy believes you express yourself through the objects you collect. This isn't the whole Amy, however. What makes the story interesting is the struggle among Amy's different parts to make her an independent, self-defining person and still find love. Enter dark-eyed and romantic strangers. There is one serious problem, however, that costs this book at least one star: the author's use of language. At one point, Amy says, "Isn't language mostly a matter of naming things?" Is Amy speaking for the author here? I thought novelists used language to evoke emotional responses in their readers. Amy narrates this book; her words carry the story. How would you expect a gal born and raised in Texas cattle country, but now a sophisticated New Yorker, to speak and think? Probably not in six-word sentences spliced together by "and" up to a half page long. Yet, that is the style Butler has adopted for Amy. This "no-style" manner of writing has to be deliberate. It can't be laziness, in a writer this experienced. Did Butler make a bet with a friend regarding who could churn out a novel in the quickest time, or was he playing games with his publisher? Is style out of fashion? I don't get it. Read this book for the love story. Amy's dilemma may strike a chord in your life.
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