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Summary: Just another Luanne Rice classic!!!
Review: I don't usually run out and buy a hardcover book immediately, but Luanne Rice books make me go and do just that. This book was well written and very touching. The whole premise of the story is Jane comes home to help her sister take care of her mother, but we find out she has come home for a very different reason and that is to find her daughter. As with any Luanne Rice book, Rice never puts all her cards on the table at once. She very slowly reveals her intentions for the charactors development chapter by chapter. The magical web she weaves makes us long to read more to understand and to develop the character in our mind. I spent a night reading this, I just couldn't put it down. Luanne Rice is in fine form. Anyone who enjoys books with a coastal flair will always enjoy Rice's books.
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Summary: A Touching Story
Review: I enjoyed Dance with Me. I did, however feel that the end was a little rushed. The story is touching - I felt for all the characters - Chloe for feeling abandoned, Dylan for his grieving, Jane for her lose, Sylvie for her sacrifice, Margaret for health. Luanne Rice writes another beautiful story about the power of love. Read it!!!
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Summary: LOVE ROCKS
Review: I felt like I wasn't a virgin after I read this book!
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Summary: fine contemporary romantic family drama
Review: In Twin Rivers, Rhode Island, former high school Principal Margaret Porter slides in and out of senility. Her youngest daughter Sylvie takes a leave of absence from her job as the local high school librarian to care for her mom. Margaret's oldest daughter Jane, a successful New York baker, comes home to help, but brings with her a very sweet cake that her mom the diabetic should not eat. Though her mother seems to have forgotten the secret they shared, Jane feels guilt over the hush-hush that drove her out of town. Jane meets and befriends young Chloe, the child she gave up at birth under pressure from her own mother. The Chadwick brood adopted Chloe and love her as if she was biologically one of their own. Soon Jane and Dylan Chadwick, a former US Marshal whose wife and child died in a shootout, fall in love. However, she has the Chloe secret and he still feels guilt over what happened to his previous family making anything permanent seem impossible. Fans of contemporary romantic family dramas with deep relationships will appreciate the latest Luanne Rice entry. The story line is solid due to a realistic cast struggling with interrelating with one another. The two siblings and the Chadwick crew seem so genuine while Margaret's condition comes across so real and adds depth as to what is best for an aging parent and for their caretaker. Though the reconciliation ending seems to easily done even if Chloe "named" herself, fans will enjoy this delightful Harriet Klausner
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Summary: Dance With Me
Review: This story was exceptionally LuAnne Rice and yet, somehow a lovely departure. Jane Porter has been seeking that which complete her, the child she gave up as a young college student. Her journey sets many free and in the end Jane rediscovers the love of family and of a most exceptional and wounded man. Dylan Chadwick is perhaps on a similar journey, to find peace after losing his own daughter, in Jane he discovers that peace and a forever love. The story was almost lyrical in voice. I was pulled into both Jane and Dylan's journey and unable to stop reading. To compare Ms. Rice's books would be unfair, but Dance With Me does prove that her story telling improves with each new offering.
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Summary: You want schmaltzy, you got it
Review: Two families, the Porter's and the Chadwick's, of Twin Rivers, RI, are linked forever by a heartbreaking event some fifteen years prior that has remained largely hidden but has had its effects. Both of the families have suffered through varying crises, but that incident from years before takes on new and dramatic significance in this most sentimental of books.
When Jane Porter finally decided to take a sabbatical from her bakery in NYC and return to her childhood home to deal with her traumatic loss from years before, little did she realize that her path of discovery would be so intertwined with Dylan Chadwick, who has been in mourning for many years after having lost his wife and daughter in a shootout on the streets of NYC. But it is Dylan's niece Chloe, a sensitive fifteen year old, who loves nature, is a bit of an animal rights activist, and has a magnetism that defies her years, who becomes the healing force for both Jane and Dylan.
Rice's books are not without their troubles. They are full of weepy, anguished moments. Not only do her characters over emote, but also the author can't let the dialog stand on its own. She is constantly compelled to add her own emotion-based spin on what has just occurred. The reader can easily feel that his or her heart is being gratuitously tugged at. An unexpected incident involving the pure Chloe with a bad boy is a guaranteed tearjerker.
Yet, despite all of the emotion - grief and anxiety being most common - her good-natured characters seem to find happiness at the end. Flawed characters, facing predictable failure, are not part of her repertoire. Former US marshall Dylan aggressively confronting some teen-age trespassers with a loaded shotgun is not a sign, in the author's depiction, of perhaps some deeper problems.
Rice is obviously appealing to a certain audience. For them, her predilection for making precocious children - wise beyond their years - the centerpiece of her stories is a surefire device. Her books are basically a pleasant, though maudlin read. Reading a couple of those a year might not be such a bad idea.
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Summary: A bit unrealistic
Review: While it was great that the adoptive mother wants what is best for her daughter, I found the acceptance of the birth mother - particularly after her deception - to be unbelievable.
Also, Ms Rice kept pointing out the differences between Chloe and her adoptive family and how much she was like Jane. Yet, when Chloe is clinging to her mother, we don't really see why. The portrayal of the adoptive parents was too one dimensional.
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