Desperate Acts (Five Star First Edition Romance)

Rating:
Summary: Lacking in depth
Review: I found this book disappointing. The characters were too simple and the story too fairy-tale. Jake is simply rotten, Nan is simply perfect, Ben is a perfect gentleman... everyone seemed very one-sided. Girl meets boy and they are "deeply in love" within a couple of days, she has the money and support to leave her bad marriage and move straight into "perfect" love - a little too Harlequin romance-ish.

Rating:
Summary: Lacking in depth
Review: I found this book disappointing. The characters were too simple and the story too fairy-tale. Jake is simply rotten, Nan is simply perfect, Ben is a perfect gentleman... everyone seemed very one-sided. Girl meets boy and they are "deeply in love" within a couple of days, she has the money and support to leave her bad marriage and move straight into "perfect" love - a little too Harlequin romance-ish.

Rating:
Summary: A romantic, thought-provoking novel
Review: I purchased this book on a Sunday, but didn't have time to begin reading it until the following Friday. I began to read and couldn't put it down - I finished it in one sitting! It's a powerful,emotional novel with everything-friends,support, hurt, hate, husbands, wives, children,and lovers! The author also has a definite love and knowledge of nature, the southwest, and animals -educating us on these elements while taking us with her through the story! It's a book every woman should read and so should men! Thank you, Jane!

Rating:
Summary: A romantic, thought-provoking novel
Review: I purchased this book on a Sunday, but didn't have time to begin reading it until the following Friday. I began to read and couldn't put it down - I finished it in one sitting! It's a powerful,emotional novel with everything-friends,support, hurt, hate, husbands, wives, children,and lovers! The author also has a definite love and knowledge of nature, the southwest, and animals -educating us on these elements while taking us with her through the story! It's a book every woman should read and so should men! Thank you, Jane!

Rating:
Summary: wonderful read!!
Review: I simply loved this book. I started to read it one day last week, at about 4pm. At 7 or 7:30pm (that same day!) I had finished it. Just a great read.!!And even though the story seems familiar: unhappy wife, rotten husband, confused child, it is not familiar at all. The wife really, genuinely suffers as she makes a decision that will alter their lives. This is not a pretty story, but it certainly is a riveting one.!!!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Been there done that!
Review: I took longer than I would have liked to read this book, but it really hit home. I too was in an abusive relationship for 26 years. I tried like Nan to make the best of everything. She went through so much and I could relate to almost everything she went through. Most people will ask why did you stay? Well Nan and I know how difficult it is to get out and away. She made me cry, and she made me cheer. Every Woman and Man should read this, and really try to understand what happens in these situations. I too now live in the Southwest and have found a wonderful life here, and a wonderful Husband. No one should go through what Nan went through. I hope Jane never stops her writing. She really knows how to keep the reader interested.

Thank you Jane
Karen

Rating:
Summary: Every Woman in The Western World Should Read This Book
Review: The title of this review is based on the reaction to the reading this book by Hollywood Agent (Selleck/Elliott) Bettye McCartt.

Psychological battering is very real and so much a fact of life for the victims that they think it is simply something they have to bear, like whipped dogs, as this book makes graphically clear. This form of abuse is subtle and insidious, but nonetheless equally as painful as beatings, perhaps more destructive of the soul.

As this book emphasizes, the first step needed for a woman to escape to a normal life is to recognize that she is abused. (Of course women are not the sole victims of psychological battering – or abuse, as it’s more commonly called – men are sometimes abused as well, both physically and mentally, but not as often as women.)

This book is a primer, based on real-life experience by a prize-winning author who recounts a parallel to her own story in the novelized form for which she is well known. This is fiction, but based on solid first-hand knowledge.

The first “desperate act,” is the suicide attempt of Nan’s teen-age son, Jamie, who has become desperate enough to do anything to escape the constant abuse of his father. This awakens Nan to her responsibility to save someone beside herself – the next generation. Only then does she fully comprehend that the primarily abused people have perhaps greater responsibilities to help their children escape and gain a hope for a normal existence. Yet, even with this incentive, she is paralyzed with fear of her husband, Jake.

She is driven to her own desperate act, the pivotal point of the book, after she is subjected to an outrageous cruelty when she is almost too ill to move. Still fearful, Nan braves up to the huge first step, which is to get a lawyer and discover her options. Writer Coleman makes clear how important this first step is, since most abusive husbands have convinced their wives that they can’t live without their support – can do nothing on their own, have no rights.

Even after she files for divorce and flies to a distant hideout, Nan is still afraid. She wonders if she can support herself and her son. She meets a man she is attracted to who appears to be everything she wishes Jake had been, but wonders if she can ever trust love again?

Jake told Nan, who was actually a stunningly talented writer, that her writing was trash and she could support herself as nothing better than a paper grader in some backwater school if she left him. She had her doubts, but never quite believed him despite his hold over her. However, his almost complete hypnotism of her is something she must overcome, and although she realizes it, and sometimes almost overcomes it, it recurs and she constantly has to fight the fear that he is right, or that he will follow her, make her come “home.”

Bonuses in this story are the parallel experience of Nan's lifelong girl friend with an unfaithful husband, which she valiantly concealed for sixteen years and the experience of Nan’s black maid and supportive friend with a troublesome man.

Nan and her lifelong girl friend are amazed to discover how successfully they veneered their misery in order to keep it from the public. Nan’s uncomprehending mother, a stereotype of proper upbringing, and her demanding mother-in-law contribute to her daily slavery. These older generations are at the root of fear of scandal if one’s marital misery is exposed. The feeling is always there for conventional wives, planted by the old ladies in their worlds, that perhaps there actually is “something wrong with them,” as their sick husbands keep telling them. The reactions to Nan's final desperate act of her mother and mother-in-law provides some of the most surprising scenes of this story.

Jake's obdurate belief that he is normal and everyone else is aberrant, and his antics to avoid facing himself are instructive.

It is not clear at any point whether Nan will fail or succeed in recovering her identity, and what her destiny will be. Author Coleman skillfully maintains the tension over this dual possibility of tragedy or redemption until the final pages. Nan’s story could be a tragedy or a success story, as she is all too aware, and the outcome is solely up to her right up to the wire.

This is a book that could have a great effect on correcting a barely recognized, widespread tragedy by alerting the public to the true nature of a mental problem of alarming prevalence. Too many women are alone and desperately afraid, for their lives and those of their children, unaware of the fact that there are houses of refuge for them. There are men who – dependent on an insane domination of women – try to recover by any means, including violence, their wives or “others” from such shelters – a horrifying but true fact.

This book is an eye-opening shocker and should also be read by ALL MEN. It obviously would be a waste of time, however, for Jake’s type, who cannot see themselves as less than perfect, but facing reality would be a delightful punishment...