Unspeakable

Rating:
Summary: So-so...
Review: I read the mixed reviews of this book and figured, what the heck, I'd try it out myself. As my rating indicates, I found the book satisfactory but not Ms. Brown's best. I can't really pinpoint what I didn't like, but I do know that after her love interest revealed his true character at the end of the book, I wondered why she didn't just walk out of his life...

Rating:
Summary: A Shakespear quote?....Wrong!
Review: I enjoyed reading the large print edition of Sandra Brown's book....UNSPEAKABLE....however was disturbed that she gave Shakespear credit for the quote..."It is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all".Tennyson penned that phrase.

Rating:
Summary: It gets my vote for "Worst Book of the Year"
Review: This book was so boring, unrealistic, sappy, unbelievable, stereotypical, cliche filled, and ironic, it has to be the worst book I have read in the past 12 months. I listened to it on tape. The essiest way to read a book, and even then I had to struggle through it. The tornado at the end was to much...come on, be at least a little creative. The con's were straight out of hollywood (I work in a prison, no one is like these two idiots). The irony lies in the title of the book, nothing is Unspeakable in this garbage called a book.

Rating:
Summary: Gary Cole makes this so-so novel shine
Review: Well, I have to admit that I'm a biased in my review since the only reason I bought the audio version of this novel was for the narrator, actor Gary Cole. I first became a fan of his work when I saw the dark (and since cancelled) show American Gothic, and was pleased to hear his hypnotic, southern drawl again in this book. He really is an incredable, versitile actor, but the novel itself was so-so. The intrigue and fear (and even the violence) came alive with Cole's spoken words, but I was dissapointed with the ending. After four-and-a-half hours of building excitement, the final scenes were a bit too tidy to fit in with the tone of the novel. Still, if anyone out there would like to hear a great southern drawl by a veteran actor, I'd highly recommend this book!

Rating:
Summary: Okay, but she's had much better!
Review: I have read almost all of Sandra Brown's books (this is not an exaggeration!), and I was really disappointed with this one. I realize that she is evolving as a writer, and I'm guessing that she is trying to expand her horizons above and beyond the usual romance novel for which she is so well known. However, this book left this reader glad that many of her earlier works are coming out in paperback at the grocery store! I am not saying that the book was terrible. I was entertained, which is pretty important, but there was something missing. I usually can't put her books down, but this one was more of a chore to read. For the die-hard romance reader, I don't think there was enough romance. I know it's possible for her to write a romance novel with some substance. She's done it before with books like Exclusive and French Silk. Those may not be the best examples, but I think they get the point across. After reading Fat Tuesday and Unspeakable, I get the feeling that Sandra Brown is trying to get away from the romance element that made her so popular. I hope her next one is better, or she may be losing a lot of readers!

Rating:
Summary: Took a while to get going.
Review: I was enjoying the book until I came to a place where all the power was out at this rural farm and the characters took long hot showers and baths. Water may be possible during a power outage in the city, but does not happen in rural areas. This distracted me from the story, making me feel that the author hadn't done her homework.

Rating:
Summary: Cole Does a Great Job
Review: I've never listened to an audiobook read by Gary Cole, and I was very impressed by his performance. However, I have to agree with many other reviewers and say that, beyond Cole, this book is nothing special. Yes, it's violent, but that didn't surprise or upset me. Characters like Cecil, Carl and Myron are violent and ugly. It wasn't the sex that bothered me, either. Instead, it was the ending. I didn't believe a single word pertaining to Jack's "real identity." I wish Brown had taken greater care in crafting a finish to her book.

Rating:
Summary: Crude and disgusting
Review: I have read nearly all of Sandra Brown's books but this is the worst one she has written as far as being too graphic. The love story was good but the killing and preverted sex were not anything I care to read about.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic !
Review: I was really surprised to see that people were disappointed in this book. I thought it was fantastic. Once started, I couldn't put it down.I started it on a Saturday night and had to force myself to go to sleep. On Sunday I finished it. I found it fascinating that she would create a female main character who was not "perfect". That in itself was a refreshing change. I thought the book was very suspenseful. You wanted to keep reading just to find out how everyone was connected. I definitely highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Unspeakable Almost Unspeakably Boring and Pat
Review: It was hard for me to get worked up about Unspeakable. It is not a bad book, really. Nor is it great. In fact, it is kind of...boring. Brown has definitely made strides in creating multidimensional secondary characters. You can see the effort she put into fleshing out the characters of the sherriff and the heroine's father-in-law. But the book just never grabbed my interest.

I didn't feel any spark between the hero and heroine. Zippo. Nada. In fact, they felt very one-dimensional to me. So lacklustre was their chemistry that the love scenes seemed somehow inappropriate and forced. Perhaps trying to rescue the heroine from being a dull, paperboard cut-out, Brown makes her a gifted amateur photographer. But it feels like something she just threw in there to try to give the woman some depth. There is the obligatory rediscovery of her artistic passion, brought about by the entrance of the hero. Then the trip to the conveniently well-stocked photo store which just opened up in the heroine's small hometown (how such a store could survive in the small town it's located in is a mystery). It is all very pat.

Neither the heroine nor the hero ever come alive. I was particularly disappointed in the hero, because usually Brown does a good job of creating interesting, compelling, attractive heroes. Jack Sawyer just seems boring. In fact the whole book feels tired and flat. There was a sense of buoyancy and energy in Brown's earlier work (her books for Candlelight, Silhouette, etc.) that has been lacking in some of her later efforts.

Knowing the intense debate that rages in the deaf community about the use of cochlear implants, which are helping many deaf people hear, I expected Brown to touch on this in her book, since the heroine is deaf. But she never does. This struck me as a grave oversight for a novel that features a deaf person as the main character.

A lot of people complained about the graphic violence in the novel. It was unpleasant, but, like the heroine's photography, it seemed like something Brown just threw in to try to add interest to the story. The gratuitous violence really just ended up adding to the book's overall boring-ness. The villains were stock characters; it was like Brown didn't even try to come up with anything new where the Herbold brothers and their accomplices were concerned. Snore.

If you must read this book, get it at the library or, wait for the paperback edition and get it at the used book store. Though her previous novel, Fat Tuesday, was a shameful rip-off of the Richard Gere-Kim Basinger movie, No Mercy, I think readers would get more satisfaction from reading that book than Unspeakable.