The Greek Villa

Rating:
Summary: Average
Review: Reeling from her father's suicide and her fiancée's betrayal, Tracey Sullivan moves to Greece to work as a ghostwriter for a famous celebrity. The celebrity, Urania, is a B-movie actress who makes life less than perfect for Tracey. Tracey's spirits (and romantic life) are uplifted by the appearance of Mark Varney, her literary agent. The story is pretty basic actually -Tracey moves to Greece and meanwhile, back in Miami, her friend Maribel discovers that Tracey's father may have not actually committed suicide. The closeness between Maribel and Tracey was one of the best parts of the story, in fact, Maribel would have been a more interesting lead character. She is strong, vibrant, colorful, and a go-getter. By contrast, Tracey is often quiet, meek, retiring, and lets others take advantage of her. While Maribel investigates on behalf of Tracey in Miami, another mystery starts to unfold at the Greek villa. Urania and her staff are keeping secrets that Tracey must uncover in order to learn the truth about herself. The book wasn't (and isn't) memorable, but was an ok read.

Rating:
Summary: engaging contemporary romance
Review: Tom Sullivan is a David willing to battle Goliath. He also raised his daughter, wannabe writer Tracey, a TV gopher, by himself. Tracey respects and loves her dad believing he is a great role model. Perhaps her only complaint is his refusal to discuss her mother with her. On a particular active news day, Tracey is assigned to report on a car accident that looked like vehicular suicide. Ironically, the victim turns out to be her father.

Tracey looks at Tom's papers until she comes across evidence that implies she is the daughter of film legend Urania Vickers. She even shares a literary agent with Urania, Mark Varney. When he offers Tracey a chance to ghostwrite Urania's novel, the American accepts and travels to the Greek Island of Santorini. Tracey hopes to find love on the island, but when she does it is not with the person she expected.

THE GREEK VILLA is an engaging contemporary romance that has a touch of mystery as to whether Urania is Tracey's biological mother (read the book). Tracey and Mark make a charming couple as they fall in love on this Greek paradise. However, the tale belongs to Urania, whose on display public ego would allow her to run for Governor of California without leaving her isle home though inside she worries about the cash needed to maintain certain lifestyles.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: engaging contemporary romance
Review: Tom Sullivan is a David willing to battle Goliath. He also raised his daughter, wannabe writer Tracey, a TV gopher, by himself. Tracey respects and loves her dad believing he is a great role model. Perhaps her only complaint is his refusal to discuss her mother with her. On a particular active news day, Tracey is assigned to report on a car accident that looked like vehicular suicide. Ironically, the victim turns out to be her father.

Tracey looks at Tom's papers until she comes across evidence that implies she is the daughter of film legend Urania Vickers. She even shares a literary agent with Urania, Mark Varney. When he offers Tracey a chance to ghostwrite Urania's novel, the American accepts and travels to the Greek Island of Santorini. Tracey hopes to find love on the island, but when she does it is not with the person she expected.

THE GREEK VILLA is an engaging contemporary romance that has a touch of mystery as to whether Urania is Tracey's biological mother (read the book). Tracey and Mark make a charming couple as they fall in love on this Greek paradise. However, the tale belongs to Urania, whose on display public ego would allow her to run for Governor of California without leaving her isle home though inside she worries about the cash needed to maintain certain lifestyles.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Well . . .
Review: Tracey Sullivan joins the ranks of millions of other romance heroines in this novel by Judith Gould as she quickly fades out of your memory once you turn the last page of the book. Gould does her best to create a character that is feisty and hard-working while possessing a value system that acceptably gets high grades on most people's morality meter. However, Gould seems obsessed with presenting a "modern heroine" that will appeal to readers that, I suppose, keep scorecards on just how small one's mini-skirt is, how high one's high heels are, how much make-up one applies before being seen by a man, and how many cheap knock-off designer clothing one can palm off as the real deal. Instead of all the fascination with such superficial trappings, Gould should concentrate more on her character development. In the case of Trace, all the spectacular settings, gorgeous clothing and melodramatic events in the world, could not save this character from the boring formulaic image destined for the graveyard of obscurity.

The plot, revolving around Trace's father's supposed suicide and two mysteries, one from the past and one on-going that arise because of it, packs a lot of action for a 340+ page novel. In fact, some of the sideline stories would have been intriguing with a little more development and a lot less mundane detail. In particular, I liked the two fraud investigators, Montague Pleasance and Stanlee Sadwith--in fact, Gould seems to have a flare for presenting the hard-boiled in an appealing light that makes for quick interesting turn-paging reading. This seems to be her real forte. But, unfortunately Montague and Stanlee, are just not in the story enough to make much of an impact on the overall analysis. The other Miami based characters, Mirabel and Ramon are superfluous to the main story line; actually they act as an excuse for Gould to add some hot sexual encounters which after a while get as old and conventional as all the other sex scenes written for this genre.

For me, the main draw of the novel was the exotic setting on Santorini, in the Greek Isles. But, Gould does nothing with this whatsoever; her descriptions could have been copied out of one of the many guidebooks on the subject. The Greeks of the island are described sadly as either crones or nobodies. The personality of such a virile race is give poor treatment by Gould here. I did not feel transported from my lawn chair to either Miami or Greece. More could have been afforded the character of Urania, the primetime TV soap opera queen and the mystery surrounding the distraught occupant of her turret room---the information overload that serves as a denouement at the tale end of the novel could have been made a lot more palatable--I just didn't think the flashback technique worked very well there.

Bottom line: if you like escapist novels with lots of sex, descriptions of clothing and make-up application and are not big on dialogue but strong on action, give "The Greek Villa" a shot. If not and you love books set in Greece, rediscover Mary Stewart's classics written in the late 50s, early 60s for a real treat.

Rating:
Summary: Well . . .
Review: Tracey Sullivan joins the ranks of millions of other romance heroines in this novel by Judith Gould as she quickly fades out of your memory once you turn the last page of the book. Gould does her best to create a character that is feisty and hard-working while possessing a value system that acceptably gets high grades on most people's morality meter. However, Gould seems obsessed with presenting a "modern heroine" that will appeal to readers that, I suppose, keep scorecards on just how small one's mini-skirt is, how high one's high heels are, how much make-up one applies before being seen by a man, and how many cheap knock-off designer clothing one can palm off as the real deal. Instead of all the fascination with such superficial trappings, Gould should concentrate more on her character development. In the case of Trace, all the spectacular settings, gorgeous clothing and melodramatic events in the world, could not save this character from the boring formulaic image destined for the graveyard of obscurity.

The plot, revolving around Trace's father's supposed suicide and two mysteries, one from the past and one on-going that arise because of it, packs a lot of action for a 340+ page novel. In fact, some of the sideline stories would have been intriguing with a little more development and a lot less mundane detail. In particular, I liked the two fraud investigators, Montague Pleasance and Stanlee Sadwith--in fact, Gould seems to have a flare for presenting the hard-boiled in an appealing light that makes for quick interesting turn-paging reading. This seems to be her real forte. But, unfortunately Montague and Stanlee, are just not in the story enough to make much of an impact on the overall analysis. The other Miami based characters, Mirabel and Ramon are superfluous to the main story line; actually they act as an excuse for Gould to add some hot sexual encounters which after a while get as old and conventional as all the other sex scenes written for this genre.

For me, the main draw of the novel was the exotic setting on Santorini, in the Greek Isles. But, Gould does nothing with this whatsoever; her descriptions could have been copied out of one of the many guidebooks on the subject. The Greeks of the island are described sadly as either crones or nobodies. The personality of such a virile race is give poor treatment by Gould here. I did not feel transported from my lawn chair to either Miami or Greece. More could have been afforded the character of Urania, the primetime TV soap opera queen and the mystery surrounding the distraught occupant of her turret room---the information overload that serves as a denouement at the tale end of the novel could have been made a lot more palatable--I just didn't think the flashback technique worked very well there.

Bottom line: if you like escapist novels with lots of sex, descriptions of clothing and make-up application and are not big on dialogue but strong on action, give "The Greek Villa" a shot. If not and you love books set in Greece, rediscover Mary Stewart's classics written in the late 50s, early 60s for a real treat.