Predictable, every cliche in the book, crap.

But I paid my money at a train station in Philadelphia coming home from a concert and read it all.

So I guess crap got me. And got me jealous. As Stephen King said in “On Writing,” (paraphrased, ’cause I’m too damn lazy to reach over and pull it off the shelf): there is the moment when you think I can, no, I AM writing better than this.

Thank you for inspiration for National Novel Writing Month.

Did you by any chance forget that this book was fiction? And purhaps if the police procedurals where more accurate and detailed that what you would have is an extremely long, not so erotic book? I don’t mean to sound condescending towards you, you are of course allowed to express your opinion as openly as you wish, but when I picked up this book, believe me, location of characters and undercover workings was the last thing on my mind.
I just want to also mention that I loved the hero. Yes he could be an asshole and had issues…much the same as Philamina. As you pointed out yourself “Crazy and Asshole” do go together. Unless I missed some rule that all protagonists have to be happy, issue free uncomplicated people?

I just finished this book today by the way.. and I throughly enjoyed it to be honest. But I just wanted to say one thing… this book is FICTION! Of course not everything is going to be to the ‘T’ of real life situations. Chill out and dont poke around EVERY little detail in a book, and just learn to enjoy the reading.

Sincerely, Lisa

xoxo
Daisy

You did? Wow, I didn’t even understand that part.

Well, sure; Romance is full of heroines with low self-esteem who are drawn to men who avoid intimacy and commitment. How often, then is the heroine “cured” by the hero’s nine inches of pure love, and the hero “healed” by the heroine’s magic (practically) virgin vagina?

I absolutely understood why Ty and Phil would be drawn to one another,

You did? Wow, I didn’t even understand that part. Ty was a lunatic, and Phil was the kind of heroine I’d happily blow up with an Uzi. Hmmm maybe they did deserve each other…

If Jane hadn’t done such a stellar job in reviewing this book, I would have happily taken a carving knife to it on my blog.

I can categorically confirm that GGGB sucked Great Big Hairy Donkey Balls.

Like Jane, I was terribly frustrated with the way Phil and Ty rarely ever address each other by their undercover names while they are in the strip club; how they managed to keep the op a secret from anyone was impossible for me to discern.

It bothered me that upon reflection, I could find not ONE emotionally healthy character in this book. Until very close to the end, Ty thinks that all women are lying whores (like his mother) and Phil is so worried that Ty “likes” her, that she’s not, IMO, properly focused on if and why she likes him. Of course the fact that he keeps walking out on her, only to practically chase her down later doesn’t help. But maybe that should be a clue to Phil. I’m still unclear as to what really caused the epiphanies in both these characters.

The one passage in the book that stood out to me as self-aware and cogent is one in which Phil explains to Ty that she is not like his mother because she is just an “inhibited young woman” trying to come to terms with her sexuality (and how many more whoring, drug addled mothers do we need in Romance? Can’t any of these characters come from average screwed-up families?). Anyway, I think this passage contains the intended theme of the novel. And ussually I’m kind of a sucker for novels in which the heroine finds that sex is a liberating rather than rule-bound thing. However, setting this book in a strip club and having Phil transform LITERALLY overnight into the club’s most popular dancer (a woman who, up to this point, had one unpleasant sexual experience and had NEVER been kissed) threatens to make the novel and the characters charicatures, IMO.

I think most of the problems in this book stem from the forcing together of the police procedural/suspense (which, beyond all the cop talk struck me as very problematic — i.e. Ty is practically arrested when a guy turns up dead at the club. That is, the lead investigator on this delicate and urgent undercover case seems in imminent danger of ARREST after little or no investigation) with the Romance. Here’s the sentence that illustrates that best for me: “Joy lit up her world, despite the bodies in her house and having learned of her father’s betrayal by their own.” Even without the context that sentence sounds to me like two dissonant chords being played at the same time.

I also think this book needed more copy editing, to excise images like “a whole suitcase full of baggage” and mistakes like “confusion reined” — maybe in the print version some of this will be fixed?

It is not easy thing to take a woman with deep and complicated sexual issues and have her come to terms with those, especially by setting her up as a waitress/dancer in a strip club with a guy who has zero respect for women. I absolutely understood why Ty and Phil would be drawn to one another, but I could not buy their relationship as a romance. Especially when it seemed that they should be more focused on those poor kidnapped girls. Even under the best of circumtances, I think Romantic Suspense is one of the hardest sub-genres of Romance to sell believably; even Linda Howard’s books often strike me as an uncomfortable mix of romance and suspense plot. I have to agree for the most part with Jane on GGGB, though — this book did not make me a believer.

And it takes nothing away from my enjoyment of the story. But I would never expect her to NOT post her feeling on a book just because I didn’t agree.

That is what I took issue with in your post. Not that it matters either way because it is just my opinon.

As for the format here, if a person doesn’t like it they shouldn’t read it. Unless jane/jayne have started to tie people up and force dear author on them… and if they have I am soooooooooo hurt I was left out.

{I’m not talking about rabid fangirls of a particular author there,}

I take exception to this remark. I feel I adequately defended my position on why I enjoyed this book and did not agree with this review.

Rae, I’m sorry that you apparently misunderstood anything I said but I would point out that if I was addressing my comments to or about any particular person in this discussion I would’ve said so upfront. What I was, however, referring to with the “rabid fangirl” phrase is a general phenomenon that occurs quite frequently online. Whether it is or is not occurring here remains to be seen.

Also, I would be the first and last person to defend anyone’s right to say what they thought about a book and/or disagree with what someone else has said. Simple disagreement and different opinions, however, do not change Jane’s opinion on her own blog. Should it, Rae?

I take exception to this remark. I feel I adequately defended my position on why I enjoyed this book and did not agree with this review. I am a reader. Do you believe because I’m an author and know Karin Tabke that I can’t read her book and enjoy it? I think the message here, in all this talk about the format of the review is getting lost. I did not agree, at all, with this review. I think the points Jane brought up about the book are not sufficent to rate this book an F. I did not have the same feelings as she when I read this book. I didn’t have a problem with sense of place, I liked the “asshole” hero. I enjoyed the heroine, the erotic words in the book are normal for the genre and didn’t bother me, Karin police procedures where right on, in my humble opinion. I didn’t have an issue with the hero taking a mother and child to the zoo. I think Jane’s remark about that issue was silly. I thought the plot was believable and fresh. So, no matter what the format, reviews are reviews. I just didn’t happen to agree with this one. That’s my message. I’m going to go off auto now for this post. I think I’ve made my point and it seems I’m just re-hashing the same thing over and over and it’s getting old.