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White Horses |
List Price: $6.50
Your Price: $5.85 |
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Product Info |
Reviews |
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Rating: Summary: Good, but not the best Review: Alert: some spoilers ahead.
I adore Joan Wolf, just to get my bias out in the open. I will buy anything that she writes, so I ran out to buy my copy of this book the day it was released. I read it in one night and am now almost through it a second time. I like this book, but it isn't my favorite. I'm happy she is back in the Regency era, and I thought the plot concept was extremely original - hero and heroine smuggling gold via a circus across France to bolster Wellington in Spain. However, I was just not completely entranced with the hero and heroine. They are definitely real people with real faults and I liked that. I think that I am used to reading Joan Wolf when she writes in the first person. In the third person, I feel I still don't really get the feel of what the hero is experiencing, because Ms. Wolf is used to writing from the heroine's perspective. Yet, when she writes in the third person, it's almost as if she has to remind herself not to give away too much of what the heroine is thinking because it isn't a first person book. Some comic or potential plot points were not as well drawn as I would have liked either, for instance, when the hero has to perform in the circus which he has been resisting for the first 50% of the book, it's given 1/2 a page description.
Despite its faults, this book is still better than many, many other books out there. I still adore Joan Wolf, this book will be on my keeper shelf, and I will eagerly buy her next book.
Rating: Summary: Borrrring Review: Couldn't finish it - even the big circus scene was only slightly interesting. The hero was so stiff he would barely smile, she kept bossing him around and even in the 21st century men don't put up with that very well, in the 19th it would be practically heresy. Maybe there was a big surprise at the end like she was some aristocrat, but the idea that a noble would marry a circus performer is ludicrous and impossible to believe. My first exposure to Joan Wolf is a big disappointment after hearing so many raves about her work.
Rating: Summary: an okay read if you love animals. Not for my keeper shelf. Review: I love animals, especially dogs and horses so I was able to persevere with this book although it fell short of plot and depth. Our hero is a stiff necked, inflexible, elite soldier, aristocrat who is given a temporary assignment to sneak a gold shipment to wellington via a circus troupe. The owner died leaving his 22 yr old widowed daughter and her younger brothers in charge. The hero joins the troupe as the new "husband" of gabrielle. The characters are typical of circus people, close knit and very family like with family squabbles, etc.. Gabrielle is gorgeous as well as talented but her compassion for people and her love of her animals is the standout part of this story.
She's a gal you'd love to be friends with. Our hero does improve with contact with these caring people but...there are just parts that aren't believable. Leo, the hero, sleeps with gabrielle to make people believe they are married. And after comments of how grieving she was when she lost her young husband, leo kisses her, asks her to sleep with him and she says she'll take care of birth control.! duh....and they have an affair. With the exception of the verbal climaxes the bedroom scenes are kind of "bing,boom, bam, thank you ma'am." However, Leo does start getting very protective of her and its obvious that he cares about her. Another "unreality"......various problems arise with the circus and our astute business lady never seems to fully realize that leo is "buying" her problems away..another duh....
although there appears to be need for concern that they are found smuggling the gold south, there is never any big "spy scare" scene just a few searches which are ultimately dropped and a very smoothe transfer of gold to the good guys that takes perhaps one page. In the middle of the book you can figure out the ending......so its difficult to keep reading but it was a nice little story so I stuck it out. Gabrielle's stardom was almost usurped by her greyhound collette who sure got a lot of loving attention......and that was no doubt genuine.......... the book repeatedly refers to the special training for these arabians and lippanzers but it never discusses what any of that training technique is which I would have welcomed.
Rating: Summary: What an incredible disappointment Review: I LOVE Joan Wolf but have been more and more disappointed with her last 4 or 5 books. At least I have been able to read through them. Not so with this book. We have the same old heroine (feisty, long braid down her back, incredibly beautiful, horse-mad)whom I usually love. Her usual to-die-for hero is absent here. At least, he is only sketched in so we don't get a real sense of him. I was able to get through 3/4 of this book but the last 1/4 was so bad I could barely read it. The end of this book reads more like a rough, sketchy outline. I wish she would go back to her first-person regencies (or her earliest regencies). I can no longer just buy a Joan Wolf book automatically and that is very sad for me.
Rating: Summary: White Horses Review: I was disappointed in this new release. Although the circus element was interesting and original, the heroine directed the hero of the book as if he were her pet. She told him when to come, what to say, what to wear even going so far as to take him shopping for clothing. The hero was on a leash with very little to say. There was little to no chemistry between the two which is very unusual for Joan's stories. The other characters in the book were uninteresting also. I do not recommend this book.
Rating: Summary: not even worth the clearance Wal-mart price! Review: I'm not sure I've ever written a review before. This book, however, was so badly written that I had to. First of all, the suppossed 'hero' is snotty and effeminite. Right away he appears as a prissy British pansy, who the reader can not relate to at all. I actually put the book down for a few days once I got to around page 60. It was that awful! Asside from the horrible characters, some of the sequences simply don't make sense. Halfway through the book, the two main characters seem to simply fall into bed. This isn't one of those romance novels where the hero/heroine have a love-hate relationship and you're so glad they finally worked it out. It leaves the reader saying, "How in God's name did that happen?"
Overall--a horrible, horrible book. I have a giant trunk full of fabulous trashy romance novels in my basement. This one will not be joining them.
Rating: Summary: rousing Regency romantic suspense Review: In 1813, Earl Colonel Leo Standish is assigned to escort a Rothschild purchased gold shipment from Brussels to Portugal, needed since the Peninsular merchants refuse paper money as remittance for goods and services. Leo is to masquerade as the husband of Gabrielle Robiscon, part owner with her two younger brothers, of Cirque Equestre, a traveling horse troupe. Gabrielle has agreed to deliver the gold out of love for her recently deceased father, a royalist.
Leo and Gabrielle meet and he behaves like a pompous aristocrat though he "obeys" her orders to better fit in with the traveling show. As the French seek to steal the gold, Leo is forced to perform as the ringmaster so that he does not stick out anymore than he already does. Sharing a moving boudoir platonically and great danger at all times, Leo begins to admire and respect his "wife", who teaches him life's lesson that love is everything.
Regency romantic suspense fans will enjoy this rousing tale of love between an arrogant lord and a horse trainer-performer amidst the danger of Napoleon's forces seeking to find and kill them. Though the choice between lifestyles by the lead couple seems too easily resolved, the changes in Leo are believable and deftly handled. The audience will agree with his estrange mother "God bless Gabrielle" as she makes the action-packed tale unique, refreshing and exciting.
Harriet Klausner
Rating: Summary: Joan Wolf Can't Miss Review: OK, so it's not great literature, but I enjoyed every page of White Horses. I am a picky Romance reader and detest unrealistic, fantastical, or farsical romance books that are big on action but poor on character development. Joan Wolf is outstanding at developing real character studies. I have read everything she has written and will continue to do so as long as she graces us with future publications. While this book was not her best, it was far better than the last 10 romance novels I've read.
Rating: Summary: Boring Hero and Too Long Review: When I finished with this book, I wondered why I didn't get the satisfied feeling I usually have when I read Joan Wolf, who is generally one of the most dependable writers out there.
The premise of the book -- smuggling English gold to fight Napoleon in Spain using circus wagons -- is intriguing. The heroine and most of the other characters are likewise interesting, and I also enjoyed all of the circus and horse descriptions.
But the hero is dull, dull, dull; this is an earl and an officer in Wellington's army, and he's completely passive? His character simply doesn't ring true.
Moreover, the novel just drags on and on, slowly meandering to its foregone conclusion. The story would have been better served if the main characters had been more involved in the disposition of the gold; give us a little danger and excitement and really put the characters at risk.
Bottom line: It's an okay read, but nothing to get excited about, and nowhere near Wolf's best work.
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