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Summary: Same old formula
Review: I picked up this book after reading and loving Hoag's Ashes to Ashes and Still Waters. I have not finished it however, because I actually groaned out loud at the "female heroine who is investigating the crime who gets involved with the man who is bad for her" theme. It is exactly the same in these 3 books. Maybe I can tolerate finishing it after a few months when I forget how much this book is like the other ones. Other than that problem, I have found her books to be most enjoyable. Let's just come up with some new characters, please!!
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Summary: Kept Me Turning Pages
Review: This book was very entertaining to read. I became completely involved in the characters and the need to find out what happened to Josh. The ending was quite unexpected and now I'm hooked on Tami Hoag and anxious to read more of her books.
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Summary: first time Hoag reader...
Review: I went into this book, knowing that there would be a part 2 book. I picked up the book because I've heard Tami Hoag is a good writer. I'm into suspense (among other subjects for reading) and knowing that this took place in Minnesota (she is basically a Minnesota based writer), I was even more opened to reading the book (I was born and raised in Minn.).A story about Josh being kidnapped in a small rural town in Minnesota. Being taken outside a skating rink, on a January evening, without the sign of anyone, anywhere. The sick and twisted person (or perhaps persons) who took him is now playing a sick game. A sick tail chasing game for the crime agencies and the town of Deer Lake itself to play...to guess. Who done it? Who could have done it? Who had that twisted ideal in them in Deer Lake, Minnesota? Who had something against eight year old Josh? Or Hannah (Josh's mother who was the head doctor in the ER at the hospital...very respected by the community)? or Paul Kirkwood? (Josh's father, who is an accountant...who was secondary in the head of the household...moreorless, always known as Dr. Hannah Garrison's husband). Reading the book, kept me guessing. I had some ideals (which was correct so far...on to "Guilty As Sin" though). As you read, there were no real concrete answers in the book, as there was no real concrete reason for one to play this game. I definitely say read the book, and have Guilty As Sin on hand because this book won't leave you with all of the answers...Night Sins isn't meant to be clean, cut and dried. So don't expect it reading only Night Sins!!
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Summary: A suspense mystery worth reading
Review: Night Sins offers a decent twisting plot will good characters and a well planned ending. Held my attention throughout and was not overly predictable. Definitley worth reading.
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Summary: Good Read
Review: I haven't read many Tami Hoag books previously, but am looking forward to reading Guilty as Sin to find out what transpires. A good way to make people buy more books is to leave you hanging for a sequal. This book makes you see how things often work in real life. A lot of times, there aren't all the answers. Sometimes, you never find out what really happened and you never know how someone could do such a monstrous thing. The book made me really feel the pain that many of the characters felt. The mother's emotional as well as Megan's physical pain. That's what makes this a good read. Although some of the writing was somewhat long-winded, I still couldn't put it down.
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Summary: HOAG ROCKS!
Review: Tami Hoag, author of such bestsellers "Ashes to Ashes" and "Dust to Dust", knows how to write a book! Though "Night Sins" is an earlier book than the other two mentioned, it still displays her considerable talents as a storyteller, weaving intense emotional backdrops which she sets her dramatic thrillers against. Creating fully believable events that affect her credibly drawn cast of characters, Hoag delivers thrillers that continue to amaze by covering new territory on each outing, and bringing to life the people of the frozen north...Minnesota to be exact. Setting most of her stories in such a forbidding meteorological place, bringing out in bas relief the events that transpire, giving each story a moody and tense atmosphere. I was hooked after reading only one of Hoag's finely written thrillers...and now I can't seem to stop reading them!
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Summary: Great!
Review: Make sure you have "Guilty as Sin" on hand to start as soon as you finish this one, it is the sequel to this one and is equally as good. I just happened across a copy of "Still Waters" a couple of weeks and read it without having read any Tami Hoag stuff before. I liked it so much that I immediately ordered both "Night Sins" and "Guilty as Sin" and read them back to back. Both are pretty long and I breezed through them in about 4 days - they were that good. I am a big fan of Patricia Cornwell and James Patterson and since I am caught up on their stuff I am now going to order a few more of Tami Hoag's books. She writes a good combination of love story and mystery, a little bit of a change from Cornwell and Patterson, but a good change in my opinion.
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Summary: Night Sins Captures Attention and Sends Thoughts Spinning
Review: Upon beginning the book "Night Sins" by Tami Hoag, I was unsure if it would be able to retain my attention through the end of the book. I was completely and utterly shocked when I couldn't put the book down! The heartwrenching story of a kinapping in a small Minnesotan town really hits home to the realities of the dark world. Hoag does an excellent job of portraying the many emotions and stresses that a grief stricken family, a corrupted police force, and a psychopathic mind all experience. Combine the angst of a kidnapping with an unexpected romance, and you have a thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat. I reccomend Night Sins as a book that pushes you to the edge of the cliff, only to let you hang there in suspense.
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Summary: Predictable, forced, and annoying
Review: This is the most difficult read I've tried in years. Maybe Harlequin fans could enjoy the forced situations, predictable characters, and endless mindless horniness of this book. Please put Fabio on the cover to steer people who like plots and sensible stories away. Someone told me that if I liked Grafton and Cornwell and Fairstein that I'd love Hoag. No way, Hoag is a romance writer - not a story teller. Frequently the story takes mindless turns, leaving the reader confused. The confusion clears when you realize the device was set to get a couple of principals into coupling position. Hoag has an original idea here. If characters are plain, or old, or physically flawed they are bad. If they are young and physically attractive they are good. Very clever. I identified the first of the bad guys when he was introduced. The character's existence made no sense, what he had to offer made no sense, and he was very homely. Although introduced as a caring person I guessed he just had to be a baddy with those looks, he was. The main male character is introduced "bulge" first in an incredibly contrived scene, your typical police chief in tights. Within a few chapters our agent lady finds herself "melting against him, on fire." Need I say Give Me A Break? Better yet, give me Kinsey Millhone.
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Summary: And the Sinner is ......
Review: My friend, Sue, has been recommending Tami Hoag for years and I recently picked up "Night Sins". Let me say, my environment and that in the novel could hardly be more different. In Australia, January is mid-summer, and Adelaide has just endured two January heatwaves (the average temperature for January was 101 degrees, up to 112 one day!) and we have just entered our third heatwave of the summer. And there I was, reading a story set in the Minnesotan winter month of January, with a windchill factor of minus 62 degrees. I cannot imagine such cold! We start whining when the thermometer drops to the (plus) 60's! I found this novel impossible to put down. I don't know why, because when put under my reviewing microscope, I found plenty of things to criticise. "Night Sins" is a bodice ripper, disguised as a thriller - the crime is just incidental to the "romance". Megan's bodice starts heaving and Mitch's pants start getting too tight (well, they would have, had he been wearing some) the moment they lock eyes. How professional is that? For someone with all her rules, she got her knickers off pretty quickly, not that she had much of a chance with Mitch's unrelenting persistence. They spend so much of the novel having little spats and then making up, the other characters are justified in their derision (if not in the way they go about it). I was not surprised to find Ms Hoag started out as a romance writer. She hasn't moved on - had Mitch been an 18th century pirate or highwayman and Megan a damsel, the sex would have been the same. This book almost needs a plain, brown wrapper! Or Fabio in an unzipped parka on the cover (not the unexplained empty sneaker on the copy I read) - at least that would have issued some sort of warning about the contents. Okay, being a woman in the male bastion of law enforcement is difficult, frustrating, etc. After being told that every ten or so pages, I think we get it. Why do all these lead characters (and that includes the parents) have to be dysfunctional? Oh, for just one normal, well-adjusted human being with scruples - none here, I'm afraid. Maybe Natalie, but her part was really small. For someone who had a migraine, the beginnings of one, or the aftermath of one, during the entire story, Megan and her medicine cabinet purse managed to rise through the ranks of the BCA pretty sensationally. The last thing I'd expect anyone to want during a migraine is sex, even with a Harrison Ford look-alike (right down to the scar on the chin - puh-leese). After all Ms Hoag's casting advice, I'm wondering who they got to play the role in the mini-series - not Ford, I'm guessing. Metaphors are useful literary devices. That does not mean every sentence needs one. Many of them were quite clever, but the sheer number of them had me groaning. How long would a TV reporter like Paige Price, or a Sheriff like Steiger, last in the real world? Don't both professions have codes of conduct, and people they report to? They were SO ridiculously, laughably bad. Somehow, it was practically impossible to have any sympathy for the parents of the abducted boy. The father was such a rat, and the mother such a saint, I just wanted to bang their heads together. And when the mother's bodice started heaving for the priest, and his trousers started swelling, well ... you know where this is going. The best (and worst) part of this book is the weather - best because it's well written and so extreme (to me, anyway) as to be interesting, and worst, because without it, the novel would mercifully have been at least 200 pages shorter. After 540 pages, you still have no idea of why the baddie did it, who he's in league with, where the kid was, what happened to him, or anything. Oh yeah, you find out at the "end" that this is a two-parter and you're expected to wade through another 500 pages or so of clichés, metaphors, stereotyped characters and steamy sex to find out. And all the copies of "Guilty as Sin" at my libraries (I'm not buying this rubbish!) are out on loan - dammit!
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