Cry No More

Rating:
Summary: Bring your tissues!
Review: Linda Howard has always been a favorite of mine so I eagerly awaited the release of 'Cry No More'. This book started slowly but the finish more than made up for the slow start. Howard tackles the very difficult subject of illegal adoption rings and of kidnapped infants and the consequences for the families they leave behind and the families who adopt them.

Milla Edge led a blessed life until the day her six week old infant, Justin, was stolen from her arms at a Mexican market. Since that dreadful day she has spent her life searching for her son and other lost children. Finally she gets a real lead regarding the whereabouts of Justin but she needs help. She turns to James Diaz (Diaz) a dangerous assassin whose reputation is more formidable than the enemies she seeks. Together they track the ruthless baby sellers and put their own lives at risk to find a child.

The story is well told and heartbreakingly real. Make sure there are tissues nearby when you get to the final hundred pages. I was interrupted several times while finishing this book and each time I returned to the story I cried more than the previous times.

Rating:
Summary: I Loved this Book!!!
Review: This book was great!! I was up until 3 in the morning to finish it. I am normally hesitant reading stories about children, but LH is one of my favorite authors, so I took a chance. I am so not sorry I did. The story was heartwrenching, but hopeful and I kept cheering for the heroine and hero. Sometimes as "romance" authors become suspense authors, the romance becomes non-existant to the story. However, this is not the case with this book. I felt the attraction between the two and I loved the resolution to this book. I also enjoyed the epilogue. I felt it wrapped things up nicely. Linda Howard is back with this book!! If only she could write faster and release books more often!!

Rating:
Summary: Not one of her best, but worth the read....
Review: Milla was just twenty three when she was plunged into a nightmare that no mother should have to endure. Her son of just six weeks was wrenched from her arms while she fought to keep him in her arms, almost losing her life in the process. Although deeply in love, her marriage was unable to hold together due to the strain. Milla could not let go of her plight to find her missing son, even though ten years have passed.

At first it was just a few whipsered words of 'Diaz' that caught Milla's attention. Soon, she was sure that Diaz was the man she was looking for, whose eye she gouged that fateful day, or someone that could help her find him. Pursued by demons that won't be laid to rest, Milla offers a reward for any information leading her to Diaz. When she meets him, although terrified, Milla knows he is the only one that could lead her to her son.

Coming together in a explosion of chemistry, Diaz and Milla resume the search for her missing son, while Diaz has another agenda. Although this book is engrossing, it is nowhere near as captivating as her other novels. The chemistry, though it was there in Cry No More was not anything like her other novels. I would recommend this book, but I would recommend that you start with some of her others first...After the Night, Shades of Twilight, and Dream Man are all great novels by Howard. It seems to me that when an author goes to hardback, her writing deteriorates rapidly. I truly hope this doesn't happen with Howard as she is one of my favorite authors.

Rating:
Summary: Another good one
Review: I enjoyed this story, especially the heart-wrenching final section. Howard has a way of bringing out the heroine and hero and the last section accomplished it. There seems to be an evolution of the male lead from previous Howard heroes because Diaz is portrayed as a loner, a mysterious figure, and totally unreadable. Milla, on the other hand is strong and driven.
The only thing I thought was missing was the gradual connection between Milla and Diaz. We see it in the final section , but we don't see the build up of this "declaration of love".

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I have been a HUGE howard fan for years and anxiously awaited the release of this novel. While the premise is compelling, the story just seems to amble along with predictability. There is little or no chemistry/romance between the two lead characters and the relationship never seems to gel. In fact, I never seemed to connect with James Diaz, the male lead.

I was also very dissappointed with the ending - instead of building up to an explosive climax it just puttered out, giving the reader no satisfaction.

Next to her other books, this one pales in comparison. I would recommend buying other classics such as Dream Man and Kill and Tell.

Rating:
Summary: No Spoilers in this Review
Review: When Linda Howard wrote "Dream Man" and especially "Son of the Morning," she wrote not only a hot romance but also a story which included elements not usually found in the romantic suspense genre. When she wrote "After the Night," "All the Queen's Men," and all her Mackenzie categories, she may not have been breaking ground with her story content, but the steam came right off the page. Then came books like "Now You See Her" and "Dying to Please," and I began to question my decision to buy Howard in hardback. Oh, they weren't bad books, just conventional without that added kick I'd come to expect. I would have still bought them, but I could easily have waited for the paperback.

"Cry No More," I'm delighted to say, combines the heat of her best books with the innovation of "Son of the Morning." This story is much greater than the excellent suspense story embedded in it. It is about terrible loss and terrible grief and how we do or don't heal. A quarter of the book takes place *after* the mystery has been solved, but I can guarantee you'll keep on reading.

And, oh yes, there are *two* alpha males interested in our heroine. See if you recognize her mate as soon as he appears on the scene. I wasn't sure, but I had hopes, right from his first appearance. njs

Rating:
Summary: I've always loved Linda Howard, but this book
Review: just blew me away. As a mother of two young children myself, I can't even begin to imagine the horror of having your six week old infant stolen from you. Then to have your family say you should move on, because, after all, it's been ten years! Even her own husband can't take her single-minded search for her lost son, and has moved on and started a new family. Finally, she gets an anonymous phone call on where to find "Diaz", someone who might be able to help her. Everything starts to fall into place, and she begins to fall in love with Diaz, when he betrays her. I won't tell you what happens in the end, you have to read it yourself, but I will tell you that I cried the whole last 50 pages or so of the book. Milla is a much stronger woman than I am. Great job, Linda!

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Summary: The Perils of Pauline, er Milla that is
Review: Though I write horror and read a lot in that genre, I really like a good story about a woman in peril, but only if the character is a strong woman who eventually recognizes the danger she's in and gets out of it by herself, or at the very least with the help of another, like her new found significant other. No weak, sissy girls for me. No women who lose their hearts over tall, dark, mysterious strangers either. She's gotta face down her man, be equal in battle, take as good as she gets.

And that pretty much describes Milla Edge, who loses her baby to a ring of baby snatchers while she's in Mexico. Milla fights, gets stabbed for her effort, loses a kidney, but never loses her determination to get her son back.

Flash forward ten years and we find Milla still searching. It's cost her her marriage and any semblance of a normal life. She's dedicated herself to helping others find those they've lost and she's good at it, but not good enough it seems to find her own son and it tears at her heart. Then out of nowhere she gets a mysterious call that points her to a lead. She follows her intuition and meets up with James Diaz, the kind of man who ghosts into a room without you knowing. Diaz offers to help her find her child.

Then we have True Galleger, a major contributor to Milla's efforts to find lost loved ones. Like Diaz, he's singular of purpose, handsome and apparently wants a relationship. So long without a man, now there are two who seek her affection. Milla's friend and doctor, Susanna Kosper, tries to fix her up with Galleger, but Milla is having none of it. Finding her baby and her work must come first. Diaz gets close, Milla weakens. But even as she leans toward Diaz, there are those who are out to betray her, there is a Judas or two in her life, has been for a long time, and now she is truly a woman in peril as surly as Pauline tied down on those railroad tracks.

Jack Priest, Writer from the Darkside

Rating:
Summary: She Never Gave Up
Review: Pregnant Milla Edge accompanied her husband down to Mexico when he took a job working at a clinic there. She wasn't worried, her husband was a doctor, plus her friend Susanna Kosper, a doctor as well, was going too. She gave birth to a baby boy and named him Justin. However sadly just weeks after the birth, Milla takes the baby shopping at an outdoor market and she's attacked. Baby Justin is ripped from her arms, but she doesn't give up without a fight. She rips the eye out of one her assailants, but the other knifes her and she almost loses her life.

Prologue over, the book picks up ten years later. Milla is divorced, her marriage couldn't withstand the lose, and she's heading up an organization called Finders, that searches for lost loved ones. A perfect job for Milla, who even after all this time, has not given up hope of getting Justin back.

Enter mysterious stranger, James Diaz, who Milla had mistakenly believed was one of the men who'd attacked her back in Mexico. Diaz is sort of an American-Mexican do gooder hit man type who lives by a moral code that would rival the Lone Ranger's. Diaz teams up with Milla, and they make beautiful music together as them manage to solve the mystery of a baby smuggling ring and find out what ultimately happened to Justin and why.

Linda Howard has written a woman in trouble thriller will keep you burning the midnight oil as you rush through pages eager to sus out who has been watching Milla, who has been betraying her, and how long that betrayal has been going on. And yes, it is a Linda Howard book, so the romance is going to be there, a tug of war between two half brothers, both who seem to be after Milla's heart, one is good, one bad, but which is which?

Ken Douglas, Underpaid Writer

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful story!!!!!
Review: I didn't particular care for Linda's last book, Dying to Please, she more than makes up for it in this book. This book is a tight thriller and from the beginning you find yourself really connecting to Milla and fighting for her son just as hard as she fights in the book. I bought this book yesterday evening, read until 1:00a.m. when I absolutely had to go to sleep, read some more when I woke up and just finished it off on my lunch hour. Such a rollercoster ride of emotions! Just wonderful. Keep at it, Linda!