Rating: 
Summary: why do authors re-package their old novels and sell as new?
Review: I was quite upset after receiving this book to find I have had read it years before. This should be stated in the ad about the book. Although , I love Mrs. Delinsky's books, I have found her and her publishers to make this a habit! Plus I was charged to return it......
Rating: 
Summary: Too much s-e-x distracts from the story!
Review: Of course, author Barbara Delinsky, started her writing career with Harlequin; so, obviously there are going to be sex scenes in her novels. This was one of the older novels, which came out in 1992 as a paperback, perhaps before she began writing mainstream hard-cover fiction. For this reason, I can make some allowances, owing to the genre of that time, and the title of course, "Passions of Chelsea Kane" is certainly not going to be about a nun in a convent.However, it gets irritating after awhile. Central character Chelsea Kane casually sleeps with her childhood friend, just to see if they are compatible. They are not. Oh well. Chelsea then moves to a small town in New England where the whole rest of the novel seems to be pre-occupied with Chelsea's lusty thoughts for one of the granite workers at the town quarry she has just bought. Scene after scene of gratuitous sex, even during Chelsea's pregnancy, yuck. And, even hints at sex during her breast-feeding, double yuck. Chelsea had arrived in the small New England town pregnant, and doesn't even bother having her new lover take an AIDs test, which could have injured her unborn child, I would think. There was AIDs in 1992, so I feel author, Barbara Delinsky was very irresponsible making pregnant Chelsea Kane so promiscuous, whether it serves the plot or not. Why did Chelsea purchase a granite factory in a small-town of New England? Chelsea was adopted as a child and she is now looking for her birth-parents who came out of that town. She is an architect and granite gives her a reason to get involved with the small town to see if she can find her parents amongst the townspeople. All the quarrying for granite stuff is about as interesting as the maple-sugaring stuff in Delinsky's "Accidental Woman" novel. The problem with writing so technical about these crafts is that if the reader is simply not interested in maple syrup, gardening, grape-growing, or quarrying........the whole novel will be a big bore. Delinsky is not so great at suspense and mystery either. The reader can easily guess who Chelsea's surprise parents will be. The ending of this long-drawn out novel is pretty lackluster as too many clues were handed out long before and there really aren't much surprises. What is good here is the narrow-mindedness of the small-town attitudes. Delinsky is an expert at capturing the feel of small New England towns and the petty and small attitudes of the townspeople towards urbane Chelsea Kane. There are some great scenes of the long-time denizens of small-town Norwitch Notch arguing with city-dweller, Chelsea, as the townspeople simply do not want her there and try to run her out of town. In fact, I would go so far as to say that author Barbara Delinsky's small town "Norwich Notch" in this novel, which she custom-created, is about as expertly defined as "Empire Falls" was in Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Richard Russo's "Empire Falls" novel----which won the Pulitzer in 2001. Both Richard Russo "Empire Falls" and Barbara Delinsky are perhaps the best in all of fiction at creating accurate New England small towns. However, I'm still going to take one star off for the bizarre sex scenes. And, one star off for all the boring stuff about granite and quarrying.
Rating:
Summary: Too much s-e-x distracts from the story!
Review: Of course, author Barbara Delinsky, started her writing career with Harlequin; so, obviously there are going to be sex scenes in her novels. This was one of the older novels, which came out in 1992 as a paperback, perhaps before she began writing mainstream hard-cover fiction. For this reason, I can make some allowances, owing to the genre of that time, and the title of course, "Passions of Chelsea Kane" is certainly not going to be about a nun in a convent. However, it gets irritating after awhile. Central character Chelsea Kane casually sleeps with her childhood friend, just to see if they are compatible. They are not. Oh well. Chelsea then moves to a small town in New England where the whole rest of the novel seems to be pre-occupied with Chelsea's lusty thoughts for one of the granite workers at the town quarry she has just bought. Scene after scene of gratuitous sex, even during Chelsea's pregnancy, yuck. And, even hints at sex during her breast-feeding, double yuck. Chelsea had arrived in the small New England town pregnant, and doesn't even bother having her new lover take an AIDs test, which could have injured her unborn child, I would think. There was AIDs in 1992, so I feel author, Barbara Delinsky was very irresponsible making pregnant Chelsea Kane so promiscuous, whether it serves the plot or not. Why did Chelsea purchase a granite factory in a small-town of New England? Chelsea was adopted as a child and she is now looking for her birth-parents who came out of that town. She is an architect and granite gives her a reason to get involved with the small town to see if she can find her parents amongst the townspeople. All the quarrying for granite stuff is about as interesting as the maple-sugaring stuff in Delinsky's "Accidental Woman" novel. The problem with writing so technical about these crafts is that if the reader is simply not interested in maple syrup, gardening, grape-growing, or quarrying........the whole novel will be a big bore. Delinsky is not so great at suspense and mystery either. The reader can easily guess who Chelsea's surprise parents will be. The ending of this long-drawn out novel is pretty lackluster as too many clues were handed out long before and there really aren't much surprises. What is good here is the narrow-mindedness of the small-town attitudes. Delinsky is an expert at capturing the feel of small New England towns and the petty and small attitudes of the townspeople towards urbane Chelsea Kane. There are some great scenes of the long-time denizens of small-town Norwitch Notch arguing with city-dweller, Chelsea, as the townspeople simply do not want her there and try to run her out of town. In fact, I would go so far as to say that author Barbara Delinsky's small town "Norwich Notch" in this novel, which she custom-created, is about as expertly defined as "Empire Falls" was in Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Richard Russo's "Empire Falls" novel----which won the Pulitzer in 2001. Both Richard Russo "Empire Falls" and Barbara Delinsky are perhaps the best in all of fiction at creating accurate New England small towns. However, I'm still going to take one star off for the bizarre sex scenes. And, one star off for all the boring stuff about granite and quarrying.
Rating: 
Summary: One of my favorites
Review: One of the only books I truly love, I have read my copy so much it is falling apart and I have to buy a new one. I have read other books by Barbara Delinsky, but this one, in my opinion, is one of her best.
Rating: 
Summary: Romance, conflict and suspense intertwined
Review: The title is a bit misleading in that it is not about sexual/sensual passions per se (although that plays a part in the story). It is more to do with Chelsea's life's passions, mainly her obsession in finding her birth parents. While on her search she encounters many adversities, including being shunned by a reserved New England community that does not condone her free-spirited lifestyle, including a pregnancy without a father in the picture, a love affair with one of the town's available and handsome men, and a business partnership in the town quarry. As the story unfolds, we learn that Norwich Notch has some hidden secrets and "skeletons" of their own that they don't want uncovered and disclosed, which include illegitimacy and domestic abuse. In other words, they want to give the appearance that they are a quaint, New England community... "appearance" being the definitive word. Thus, it is easier for them to hold Chelsea Kane in judgment rather than admit their own shortcomings. I gave the book 4 stars because I thought it was a bit too long. I would have left out the lengthy descriptions of the quarry business. Aside from that, it's one of those books that will grab your attention from the beginning and keeps you hooked right up to the end.
Rating:
Summary: Hidden Treasure
Review: This book really grabed me from the start. I think it is one of the author's best novels. Don't be thrown off by the size of the book... it is a very fast read. Overall it is a very pleasant and heart warming book. My only negative comment is I found the sub-plot about Donna a little depressing. But I am sure a real critic would say that Donna made the book believable. Don't pass this one up!
Rating:
Summary: Hidden Treasure
Review: This book really grabed me from the start. I think it is one of the author's best novels. Don't be thrown off by the size of the book... it is a very fast read. Overall it is a very pleasant and heart warming book. My only negative comment is I found the sub-plot about Donna a little depressing. But I am sure a real critic would say that Donna made the book believable. Don't pass this one up!
Rating:
Summary: Good Story (If you can last long enough to finish)
Review: This book tells the story of a woman, Chelsea Kane, who, after the death of her adoptive mother, decides to "discover" herself by looking up her biological parents. She moves to Norwich Notch (her birth place) to start her search. The book is slow and other than Chelsea, the character development lacks some. But after finishing the book, I decided the slow moving pace of the book represented the slow pace of life in Norwich Notch. Ms. Delinsky starts the book out with a family squabble over a divided set of jewelry, which leads the reader to believe this is one of the conflicts Chelsea has to resolve throughout the book. While the other conflicts resolve in a satisfying way, this story line has no closure.
Rating:
Summary: Good story about an adoptee
Review: What a wonderful story of an adoptee and her struggle to find her birth heritage. When her adoptive mother dies, Chelsea Kane begins to commute between her position as a partner in a lucrative Baltimore architectural firm and her new position as a partner in a granite company in the small New Hampshire town of Norwich Notch where she was born. Her adoptive father strains against her doing this. He cannot understand her need to find her heritage. Trying to please her father, she has a one-night stand with her long time friend and business partner which her father also wants her to marry. Unfortunately, they are better friends than lovers but Chelsea becomes pregnant. The day she plans to tell him is the day she finds out he is going to marry a former girlfriend. Without telling him she is pregnant, she throws herself into the granite business and renovates a farmhouse in her birth town. But all is not well. There are those who don't want an outsider in their town. But Chelsea is determined to find her heritage. In the process, she finds a half of her she never knew existed and a man who is willing to stand beside her through it all.
Rating:
Summary: Good story about an adoptee
Review: What a wonderful story of an adoptee and her struggle to find her birth heritage. When her adoptive mother dies, Chelsea Kane begins to commute between her position as a partner in a lucrative Baltimore architectural firm and her new position as a partner in a granite company in the small New Hampshire town of Norwich Notch where she was born. Her adoptive father strains against her doing this. He cannot understand her need to find her heritage. Trying to please her father, she has a one-night stand with her long time friend and business partner which her father also wants her to marry. Unfortunately, they are better friends than lovers but Chelsea becomes pregnant. The day she plans to tell him is the day she finds out he is going to marry a former girlfriend. Without telling him she is pregnant, she throws herself into the granite business and renovates a farmhouse in her birth town. But all is not well. There are those who don't want an outsider in their town. But Chelsea is determined to find her heritage. In the process, she finds a half of her she never knew existed and a man who is willing to stand beside her through it all.
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