Deep in the Valley

Rating:
Summary: A Fall into Grace...
Review: ...Grace Valley, that is, which is the setting for this latest and best of Robyn Carr's works. If you're only going to read one book this fall, let this be the one.

Rating:
Summary: A Fall into Grace...
Review: ...Grace Valley, that is, which is the setting for this latest and best of Robyn Carr's works. If you're only going to read one book this fall, let this be the one.

Rating:
Summary: Come to Grace Valley for a visit
Review: Deep in the Valley is the story of the townspeople of Grace Valley and also the surrounding area. The main character is June Hudson, the town doctor. June is in her thirties and is beginning to really think about having her own family. Surrounding June is a whole town of friends and family. All of whom know everybody else's business.

Deep in the Valley is written much in the same way as Debbie Macomber novels. There is a whole town of people with real life issues to learn about and keep track of. While there is the main character of June, there is also many secondary characters who get their fair share of space in the book. At times though it seems as if there are too many characters, since it's hard to keep everyone straight. Eventually though the reader prevails and the characters become like family, friends, and neighbors. There are characters to like and dislike.

This book was easy to read, though at times seemed choppy. Again, to compare with a D. Macomber novel which goes easily from scene to scene and character to character, Deep in the Valley seems to at times jerk from one character to the next and also from one storyline to the next. The book seems to lack a smooth trangression at times, making it less enjoyable to read.

Overall, Deep in the Valley is a good book. It's a nice way to spend a few hours meeting new people and learning about their lives. Not a romance, yet still a good read.

Rating:
Summary: Come to Grace Valley for a visit
Review: Deep in the Valley is the story of the townspeople of Grace Valley and also the surrounding area. The main character is June Hudson, the town doctor. June is in her thirties and is beginning to really think about having her own family. Surrounding June is a whole town of friends and family. All of whom know everybody else's business.

Deep in the Valley is written much in the same way as Debbie Macomber novels. There is a whole town of people with real life issues to learn about and keep track of. While there is the main character of June, there is also many secondary characters who get their fair share of space in the book. At times though it seems as if there are too many characters, since it's hard to keep everyone straight. Eventually though the reader prevails and the characters become like family, friends, and neighbors. There are characters to like and dislike.

This book was easy to read, though at times seemed choppy. Again, to compare with a D. Macomber novel which goes easily from scene to scene and character to character, Deep in the Valley seems to at times jerk from one character to the next and also from one storyline to the next. The book seems to lack a smooth trangression at times, making it less enjoyable to read.

Overall, Deep in the Valley is a good book. It's a nice way to spend a few hours meeting new people and learning about their lives. Not a romance, yet still a good read.

Rating:
Summary: Delightful engaging tale filled with juicy gossipy substance
Review: DEEP IN THE VALLEY shares the day to day happenings of the Grace Valley inhabitants who can count among their townsfolk those who are loopily odd and charmingly eccentric, those who are pillars of the community and irreplaceable, and those who are bottom-of-the-barrel bad, so bad even prayer is wasted on them.

One gets the feeling that Robyn Carr placed each of these characters on a tiny square town map that she created, then shuffled them around like chess pieces until they fell into their comfort zones. They operate as fluidly.

June Hudson is thirty seven, single, and Grace Valley's general practitioner. The alarm on her biological clock is a tick away from shrieking and she knows that if she is to have a child she has to do something about it now. But in this town where everyone knows every blessed thing June doubts that her dreams will ever bear fruit. Because it is a known fact that if you live and work in Grace Valley you needed to have picked out your husband way back in the ninth grade. June didn't. Dumb, dumber, dumbest. Now she is overworked, underpaid, and time is galloping past so fast it is like witnessing the wind from the interior of a vacuum pack.

Sam owns the gas station a block from the town center. His priorities are clearly flagged -- when he is not fishing Sam is happy to pump gas. Sam is seventy if he is a day, with a body like a seventeen year old and eyes that Paul Newman would gouge for. Justine, twenty-something, is the town florist who provides flowers for the church. Busy-bodies in town have her supplying more than flowers for the local minister, a randy devil whose sexual exploits are legendary. As are his wife's instincts for sniffing young ladies out of the presbytery. Sam, after a couple of chapters guffawing at the situation, starts to look out for Justine: creating new May-December fodder for the gossips.

Myrna, June's elderly aunt, lives in a large gothic home on the edge of town. Myrna writes mystery. A while back, Myrna was married to a philandering travelling salesman, but somewhere en route she 'misplaced' her man. Since then her tales have become more ghoulish, more gory and themes of dismemberment and buried body parts are common. Locals speculate over coffee that Myrna's real life story is just as grizzly as her fiction. Myrna's character alone is worth the price of this book. Such a chortle!

Way back, hiding deep and dark in the national forest live the Mull family. The Mulls will break your heart. Clarence, a Vietnam vet, suffers from PTS. As a child his wife was slashed and bears a deforming scar down her cheek, but a larger scar undermines her psyche. Terrified, they live as isolates, which is what they seem to need. But they have kids and they know this is not good. Teenagers. Who need a place in society.

Up there on Trinity Alps if you listen carefully you can hear the DEA helicopters searching out marijuana plantation sites even on the quietest night. And sometimes sufferers of drug war wounds furtively arrive at June's surgery. One of them, Jim, brought a patient bleeding from a gunshot wound. His was a rifle request for help, his finger curled around the trigger, causing June's heart to stop. Then go hip-hop.

There are few secrets in Grace Valley. Robyn Carr goes so far as to make a lovely tension out of trying to keep the love story a secret here, attempting to outwit the gossip. But the gossip and the grapevine prevail - to such an extent that this very failing of the townsfolk almost causes a catastrophe. It certainly contributes. How they respond to that catastrophe is a measure of how caring the townsfolk really are. The love story in this tale is peripheral but the characters, the joys, and the travails that evolve are so captivatingly drawn the focus matters not.

Hopefully, this is only the first of a trilogy of the Grace Valley characters. May they live, love and laugh together long and happily. This is a delightful, engaging tale filled with juicy gossipy substance.

Rating:
Summary: Good Book, Not a Romance Novel Though
Review: Deep in the Valley was excellent. Ms. Carr's account of small town living and the going ons was pretty much accurate. The town of Grace Valley reminded me so much of the small town where I grew up. Everybody knew everybody and all your business was out there whether you wanted it out there or not. Although small towns are quaint, they still have their share of problems with crime but there's closeness in the community you just won't find in the big cities and Ms. Carr brought a lot of this out in her novel. June Hudson and her community of family and friends made me miss that place where I can no longer live because I do enjoy my privacy but I miss not knowing who my neighbors are. This novel was pleasantly pleasing and left me wanting more.

Rating:
Summary: Small towns are the best and then ......
Review: Deep in the Valley was excellent. Ms. Carr's account of small town living and the going ons was pretty much accurate. The town of Grace Valley reminded me so much of the small town where I grew up. Everybody knew everybody and all your business was out there whether you wanted it out there or not. Although small towns are quaint, they still have their share of problems with crime but there's closeness in the community you just won't find in the big cities and Ms. Carr brought a lot of this out in her novel. June Hudson and her community of family and friends made me miss that place where I can no longer live because I do enjoy my privacy but I miss not knowing who my neighbors are. This novel was pleasantly pleasing and left me wanting more.

Rating:
Summary: Well worth the purchase!
Review: For those of you unfamiliar with Robyn Carr's The House on Olive Street, Deep in the Valley will be a 5 star read. But for the rest of us, we know Carr can do a little bit better, although not much. Deep in the Valley picks us up out of chairs (beds, offices, wherever) and plops us down in Grace Valley, CA, right into the heart of a small town unknowingly on the verge of some major shake-ups. Our tour guide is Dr. June Hudson, who hears her biological clock ticking in between the house calls, phone calls, and emergency calls she gets as the towns only doctor. Enter her "retired" doctor father, her applicant for a second town doctor, the preacher, the office assistant, the eccentric novelist aunt, the gas station owner, the myriad assortment of disfunctional families, the baker... everyone but the candlestick maker, although I'm sure he's mentioned too. This cast of characters may seem too large, but it won't take long for them to grow on you, and seem like members of your own hometown. A delightful read with enough action and humorous antics to set you laughing and maybe even dampen your eyes. Well worth the purchase, and at 5.99 it's a steal compared to some of those other high-priced books!

Rating:
Summary: Well worth the purchase!
Review: For those of you unfamiliar with Robyn Carr's The House on Olive Street, Deep in the Valley will be a 5 star read. But for the rest of us, we know Carr can do a little bit better, although not much. Deep in the Valley picks us up out of chairs (beds, offices, wherever) and plops us down in Grace Valley, CA, right into the heart of a small town unknowingly on the verge of some major shake-ups. Our tour guide is Dr. June Hudson, who hears her biological clock ticking in between the house calls, phone calls, and emergency calls she gets as the towns only doctor. Enter her "retired" doctor father, her applicant for a second town doctor, the preacher, the office assistant, the eccentric novelist aunt, the gas station owner, the myriad assortment of disfunctional families, the baker... everyone but the candlestick maker, although I'm sure he's mentioned too. This cast of characters may seem too large, but it won't take long for them to grow on you, and seem like members of your own hometown. A delightful read with enough action and humorous antics to set you laughing and maybe even dampen your eyes. Well worth the purchase, and at 5.99 it's a steal compared to some of those other high-priced books!

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic read.................
Review: I loved this book and I can not wait to read "The House on Olive Street".I felt like I lived in Grace Valley and worked right along side of Dr Hudson and Dr Stone.I was so happy that all turned out so well for Dr Stone and the terrible charges that were being held against him by his mean and hateful ex-wife and ex-father-in-law. I can not wait to read the other books by Ms.Carr.