Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful love story
Review: The book began slowly, and I didn't think I wanted to deal with the language, but I am so glad that I hung in there. I have had a similiar love story like this in my life. I just hope mine ends the same way as Olympia's!
Rating:
Summary: This book "rocks" - get it???
Review: First of all, I would like to say that this is the best book I have ever read. For one reason, it mirrored my own real life story - sort of. I would like to respond to the man in Brookline who cannot fathom that a 41 year old man could fall for a 15 year old. My boyfriend is 48 and I am 20, and we have been very happy for almost two years. No matter what anyone says, ours is a love that comes only once in a lifetime. So there!Anyway, back to the book. Fortune's Rocks is not your typical romance novel. First of all, the writing was excellent and I could not put the book down for an instant. It was very suspenseful with brilliant characters and interesting subplots. Some people may think the dialogue was mushy, but I didn't think so. I thought it was very romantic and besides, it was the Victorian era, so people spoke in a different manner than we do today. Also, I have a love for the Victorian era and the customs, dress, and the way society was structured back during that time. That also caught my interest - the excellent historical research the author had to do to make the time period come alive. I felt like had been transported back in time and felt very real empathy for the characters. The opening scene with Olympia's realization that she is coming of age from a girl into a woman is the hook that masterful storytellers are adept with - the foreshadowing that tells you what the book will ultimately be about and leaves you with a lasting impression for a long time. The book has very memorable scenes that you can visualize in your mind and I think it would make a wonderful movie. If you haven't read this book, go ahead and do so right away. I will definitely read the rest of Anita Shreve's novels. If this one blew me away, I no doubt think the rest of her writings will keep me entertained as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Mediocre at best
Review: I am a fan of Anita Shreve's work, and would site Weight of Water as one of my favorite books, but this overly long novel was a huge disappointment. The thought of a 14 year old girl becoming so overcome with passion for a 41 year old colleague of her father's is ludicrous. The characters came across as cold and totally unsympathetic, the dialogue was stilted to the point where I found myself laughing at passages that were certainly not meant to be humorous. Give this one a pass, I wish I had.
Rating: 
Summary: Passion Overcomes Morality in Turn of Century Tale
Review: Anita Shreve takes a step into the past with this book which begins in 1899 and follows the life of Olympia Biddeford, a privileged young girl from the Boston society world. Educated by a doting, cultured, and scholarly father, Olympia is intelligent and sophisticated beyond her years; however, when she meets a friend of her father's, Dr. John Haskell, she is already primed, at 15, to enter the idealistic and free-thinking world of Dr. Haskell who has written a book of essays detailing the horrors of factory life in New England. Besides his mind, Olympia forms an immediated physical, if idealistic attachment to the doctor which is reciprocated despite his apparently successful marriage and children. What follows is a passionate and ultimately scandalous love affair that predictably nearly ruins them both. There is plenty of suspense in the novel despite the somewhat cliched scenes that necessarliy occur. One wishes for their love to be unsuspect while at the same time wondering in near disbelief at the Victorian moral code that seems to rule their every move. It takes a while to get past the antiquated societal strictures, but eventually, one finds that this is a love story with all the passion and steam of a modern novel yet with the ever-restricting problems of "what people will think." Overall, it is well written with lovely descriptions of seaside New England as well as the triumph of what is really moral--not just what people think and what society says.
Rating:
Summary: Sadly disappointing
Review: I am a dedicated reader and fan of Anita Shreve and have loved all of her other works. However, this book was disappointing from the first page. I could not relate to any of the characters...I never felt any connection to them at all. The fact that a 41 year old man could fall in love with a 15 year old at first sight is beyond my comprehension, even in the present day, let alone a century ago. The prose is overly dramatic and there were passages that did not keep my attention at all. I hope her next novel improves upon this one...
Rating:
Summary: Fortune's Rocks = Romance Novel
Review: "Fortune's Rocks" should be classified as a Romance novel, meaning, if you like the kind of book that shows and woman in a rapturous embrace on the cover, you'll probably like this. If you think that Anita Shreve does a good job portraying "real people" you need to expand your reading list. The prose was overly elaborate (for example, Olympia said "Was it not?" at the end of 90% of her sentences)and dripping with ridiculous metaphors and sentimental heartstring tugs. "It was not" worthy of a writer I've heard much about.
Rating: 
Summary: Why?
Review: Fortune's Rocks kept me asking why: Why does John Haskell give in to passions for a teenager? Why does Olympia's father move from condemnation to forgiveness? Why does her mother apparently remain without a voice or an opinion? Why does Olympia herself never fear that her father's funds might dry up? The novel is all plot - albeit beautifully written and deeply researched plot - with an occasional Big Message and very little insight into its characters. But it sucked me in and kept me reading... why? The story's rhythm is that of the New Hampshire coast: the waves keep coming in, each one different but with a similar result. The author's repetition of scenes and thoughts and language lull like a gentle surf and pull the reader along with them, but ultimately, none of the characters seems to grow believably over these 13 years. Where they do change, if they do, we're still left asking... why?
Rating:
Summary: It was good, it was bad, and then....It was stupid.
Review: It started off alright. Teenage girl, trying to rebell. and then she has a crush on a married man. It happens. But then it got unbelieveable. How many middle age merried men with a buncha kids, one of which is this girls age, run off? and then they live happily ever after??!! nope. I just can't understand that. it, it makes no sense to me. So i give it 3/5 stars because 3/5 of the book was believeable.
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Summary: A second in time with disastrous results or not!
Review: The year is 1899 and this is the story of an intelligent, well-bred young girl of 15 who falls in love with a married man almost 3 times her age. As you might surmise this is a recipe for deception and a future where both are spurned by the cultured set that were once there friends and family. The author gives us three-dimensional characters that are interesting, exuding warmth and true human qualities, as well as inadequacies. The book brings us full circle to a choice of compelling sadness and difficulty that only the "Wisdom of Solomon" could answer to. It is the story of loves lost and found, and the rising of a phoenix from the ashes of what was once an auspicious life. A well-written book by an enjoyable author, certainly worth the time.
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Summary: Shreve Knows How People Work-Emotions, Memories,&Representat
Review: First of all I just want say that I have never been let down by an Anita Shreve book. The first one I read was Eden Close, and though I was only ten, I knew that the words I beheld were special. I intend to reread that book now that I'm an adult and will understand it. In this "review" I want to do two things; tell you to READ THIS BOOK AND ALL THE OTHERS BY SHREVE, and to address the some of the other reviewers comments. One of the reviewers said that Olympia and John are not very sympathetic characters- that they are rather selfish. Real people (at least in my experience) are not always very sympathetic, and Shreve does indeed make Olympia and John (all the other characters too) very real. What she has done is take two "ordinary and respectable" people and put them in circumstances that are anything but. She puts them in a situation they never expected themselves to be in leading to actions on their parts they would never before have considered doing, and thus she shows us that who we think we are and what we think we stand for don't always coincide with the reality of our true person. We can all relate to being caught in something; not knowing how we got there, or how to get out. Another reviewer said that her dialogue is "flat" and clumsy. In Fortune's Rocks Shreve writes in images that have the same feel as our own memories do. It can be easy to recall the color of the ocean, or the scent of a lover, but dialogue is not easy to recall, most of the time our memories don't consist of much dialogue, and when they do it IS flat and fragmented. The flatness of the dialogue has another purpose in my opinion, people often do not say what they really truly feel at heart, which leads to a certain falseness of speech, and sometimes when they do say what they really mean (to express their emotions) they often do it in a very controlled "flat" way to guard themselves from rejection, ridicule, and persecution. Shreve conveys her knowledge of human nature in this book. We should all be able to see ourselves in it.
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