Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Review: Morning Light by Catherine Anderson

Morning Light by Catherine Anderson
published by Avon Romance in January 2008

Born with second sight, Loni MacEwen must warn the handsome rancher Clint Harrigan that his son is in danger-except he doesn't even have a son. Then the drama Loni predicted unfolds on the news: an orphaned boy is lost in the wilderness. As Loni and Clint help in the search for the boy, they begin to form a bond of their own...

Genre: Contemporary romance
Series: The Harrigans, book #2 (slightly related with the Coulters series)

The Story: The back blurb is one again quite accurate for a synopsis, but here’s s0me more details. Loni comes from a family of psychics; however, her gift is stronger than in the previous generations. After a failed and catastrophic attempt at helping the police with her gift, Loni moves closer to her family to start a new life. Unfortunately, her gift is something she can’t ignore and she becomes torn between responsibility and self-protection. In the end, she chooses responsibility and therefore warned Clint Harrigan of her vision. However, Clint doesn’t have a son – not to his knowledge, and therefore write up Loni as a charlatan. This is not a happy situation for Loni, who has “seen” Clint since she was young; the cowboy of her dreams isn’t the prince charming she was expecting. It doesn’t stop her from helping Clint when he asks her to accompany him on their search for the lost boy in the wilderness when Clint learns of the tragedy in the news and quickly realizes that Loni and him are the boy’s only chance to survive.

My Opinion: I’ve enjoyed many of Ms Catherine Anderson’s books in the past few years; my favorites being Sunshine and Blue Skies. True, her books are quite cheesy and she has over-used the “not-perfect” heroines plot, but the characters and storylines were quite enjoyable. It was not the case with Morning Light. I love books with psychics – especially the FBI SCU series by Kay Hooper; so perhaps I’m harder on psychics heroine and that might have contributed to my non-enjoyment… but then, I also had a problem with the hero. Loni, I think, is strong and very determined and I admired her for that. She’s been able to build herself a life, finding ways to work around her gift. One thing that annoyed me though is that her gift wasn’t well defined. I know that psychic powers don’t always fit nicely in a category such as clairvoyance or telepathy…In the case of Loni has visions when she touches people or objects (usually old ones). However, are the visions from the past, present, future or all of the above? How can her mother and grandmother who have the gift too spy on her and her sister using it? Since the gift is an important characteristic in Loni, I wish it’d been more consistent, that the author would have put more thoughts in it. But back to Loni. I thought she was an okay heroine till she jumped into TSTL la-la land. I know that lack of communication is very common in romance, but come on. It wouldn’t have killed to talk to Clint and explains the situation and her fears before running away. I mean, she didn’t even say goodbye… and in the end, it all worked out fine anyway. I thought the conflict at the end was quite unnecessary.

As for Clint, I didn’t like him much. Physically, he looks a lot like the Coulter brothers from Ms Anderson’s previous series… however, personality-wise. He’d be someone that I detest probably. Arrogant and thinks he knows it all. I dislike how he was “I’m Catholic as a result, I don’t believe in psychic.” It’s almost as if he thought himself above Loni. In addition, the no-sex rule before marriage and then, breaking if off… I don’t know, I thought it was pointless.

The story overall wasn’t that good either. Loni and Clint basically fell in love with each other in the space of a few days while they were looking for a lost boy in the wilderness… it kind of rubbed me in the wrong way since it’s supposed to be such an emergency situation. Also, I thought Ms Anderson put the drama at the wrong place. You have Loni that thinks that afraid that she lost all her privacy because reporters know that she’s a psychics and could help missing people and then, you have Clint that discovers he has a son and that his son just lost his mother and adopted father. See, between the two, I think that the situation between Clint and his son would be more delicate and more conflicts would arise from it… but no, it was solved all nice and easy… instead, there’s more drama between Clint and Loni because she runs away… but then, in the end, that too was resolved too easily.

So this book was definitively a miss with me and that’s just too bad, because I was looking forward to it. Ms Anderson’s next book is a historical if I’m not wrong, Comanche Moon… and then, we’ll probably have to wait till next year for the next Harrigan brother book… but I’m not sure anymore if I’ll buy it or not.

My Grade: C-.