quick quick before work starts (well I'm at work, but doesn't mean I have to work... yet.) Just finished reading Dream Makers by Nora Roberts yesterday night. Dream Makers is a compilation of 2 of her old books: Untamed and Less of a Stranger. I bet those books were written in the 80's :P
These two books are obviously Nora's earlier work, so I won't be too picky... they're cutsie stories, but nothing more. In fact, I thought they lacked depth, but that's probably because they're both really short. In Untamed, Jolivette Wilder is a lion trainer. She was born and raised in the circus and followed her father's footsteps. Unfortunately for her, her parents died in a fire when she was 5-6 y.o. Her legal guardian was Frank Prescott, the owner of the circus, and she loved him as a father. Frank just died recently and he left the circus to his son, Keane Prescott. Jo resents Keane because he never came to visit Frank (Keane is an attorney and lives in Chicago... his parents divorced when Keane was still a baby). So anyway, Keane comes to the circus and must make a decision about what to do with the circus.
In Less of a Stranger , you have Megan who's an artist (she sculpts thing) and who lives with her grandfather after the death of her parents. Her grandfather owns Joyland, an amusement park. Enter David Katcheron, Katch, who wants to buy the amusement park and you almost have the whole story already.
So as I said, both are cutsie and simple stories. Nothing compared to Nora's present work. My problem with these two stories is that even if they can "withstand" time... they lack the sleekness of Nora's writing and you can still tell by the way the storyline and the characters are written that it is a work in the 80's, early 90's. First of all, the two heroines are very, very naive ^^; and they easily fell in love with the guys, a few kisses and the deal was done... only, it took them so much time to realize it. What bug me more tho is that you don't get anything from the main guys. Of course, by the way they behave, you know that they're smitten too, but they don't say it and the heroines are clueless... they're not TSTL... just extremely clueless and naive. At the end, when the heroes are "I love you" they're like: "Really?!?" well yeah girls, obviously. Another thing that bug me, esp. in Untamed is that you don't get to know the heroes very well, esp. compared to the heroines. Why didn't Keane visit his father? Why does he resent his father? Finally, the stories were too short, so lack of development. You know, each year, Silhouette re-prints a couple of Nora Roberts earlier book that you can't find anymore. I have a couple of them and some were just awesome... Loving Jack is one of them... however, these two are not on par.
