Shadows Of The Past

Rating:
Summary: Shadows of the Past
Review: I can't help but respond to a previous reviewer. A dis-service is done to stalking?? What do you call it then, if somebody is following you and you feel it like a sixth sense? You're being STALKED!!! I haven't read Jenna Mills but I think the beauty of the Intimate Moments line is that there are a ton of completely different writers. You get emotional romances such as Laurey Bright, and you get gritty suspense stories like Frances Housden's previous books.
Maria was a great character. she'd had all this bad stuff happen to her but she was getting out there and dealing with it, she wasn't being a victim with a chip on her shoulder. Her family were great, and Franc was a great hero. I'd recommend this story as the suspense builds up slowly - some good red herrings as to who the stalker is - to a fantastic ending. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: does not gel
Review: I was just disappointed in this tale. I know the series books often does not allow room for true fleshing out of plots and characters, but you only have to look to Jenna Mills to see it can be done and done well.

The premise seems "shaky" and really becomes unbelievable at points, undermining the whole effort. Set in New Zealand, I was glad to see a Non-US story line. However, the write just asks the reader to suspend credibility and asks you to accept things because she says they are.

It opens with Maria going to a big party to make some sort of denouement against the creep she "feels" is stalking her. Off the bat, it does a disservice to the real crime of stalking. When Maria talks about being stalked, it's the guy is always looking at her, half the time she "FEELS" him around. Makes one begin to wonder if Maria is tightly wrapped or not. Stalking is a serious problem and to see it handing in this fashion is not points in the writer's favour.

At the party, she meets Franc. He is a son of a crooked cop who killed himself. He immediately comes on to Maria, whom he rates as a "goddess". We are told this so many times over in several pages you really want to scream - YES, WE KNOW! We also learn when Maria was 17 she was kidnapped and she fortunately remembers nothing of her past because of it.

This makes Maria seems like a perpetually victim, if not very unreliable mentally. The whole premise just does not work, and leaves the reader unable to believe these characters are real.