Plain Jane

FERN MICHAELS

Synopsis: Back in college, Jane Lewis would have given anything to be like homecoming queen Connie Bryan. Instead she was just Plain Jane – overweight, frumpy, and painfully shy. That was then. Today, a lovely and confident Dr. Jane Lewis has a thriving psychotherapy practice, her own radio talk show, a beautiful old Louisiana mansion, and her affectionate, nutty dog, Olive, to keep her company. The only thing missing is someone to share her life.

Jane has never forgotten Michael Sorenson, the boy she'd admired from afar in college. Now, he's inspiring her to hope for a future together. She's also never forgotten the brutal, unsolved attack that ended Connie Bryan's life – and haunts Jane still. Suddenly, the present collides with the past, as she finds clues into the identities of Connie's attackers – clues that send her into a world of risk and excitement, challenging her to become a truly extraordinary woman...if she dares.

Stats for my copy: Mass market paperback, published by Kensington Publishing Corp, 2001; 345 pages; given to me by a BookCrossing member.

My thoughts: I've only read two other books by Fern Michaels. The first one, LATE BLOOMER, I loved. So much that I read it in one day, and then immediately looked up Ms. Michaels' back list and added all of her books to my wish list.

Next I read FINDERS KEEPERS, and I liked it for the most part, but I didn't love it the way I loved LATE BLOOMER.

I still had high hopes for this third book, but they were dashed pretty quick. The prologue moved quickly, as Jane and Connie are walking from the library to their dorm together one night at the end of their senior year, and are attacked by a group of boys who rape Connie. Connie insists that Jane not tell anyone what happened, and Jane, against her better judgment, agrees to keep the secret. She later finds out at graduation that Connie had committed suicide.

Fast forward to the present day. Jane is now a successful psychiatrist, and is still burdened by the guilt she carries around for never going to the police or telling anyone what happened to Connie.

I never connected with Jane. She was likeable enough at first, but as the book progressed she became shrill and demanding and self-centered, and I had a very hard time liking her or caring about her. She begins seeing a new patient, a man who's wife had been raped, and he's been unable to deal with it. Talking to this patient brings back all of her memories, and her guilt, and eventually a determination to find the men who raped her friend in college and see that justice is served.

The building relationship with Mike is about the only believable plot line. Jane's godmother, Trixie, adopts a retired police dog, and her antics with the too smart to be true dog are just so out there. He's depressed, and she decides he misses working, so she buys an old police car and hides baggies of marijuana on her property and then takes him out at night, lights flashing and sirens blaring, so he can look for them. I know they live out in the country, but I still can't believe there isn't at least one neighbor close enough to complain about the sirens.

Jane also has a dog who is unrealistically capable and intelligent, and there is the ghost of a teenage boy living in Jane's home, appearing to her when she thinks she must be asleep and dreaming, which I found a little creepy.

Between Jane's efforts to track down Connie's rapists, Trixie and her police dog, the mystery of the ghost boy's death, and a couple of other side stories that have Jane sneaking around peeking into her new patient's windows trying to get a glimpse of his wife and punching another therapist in the face...convoluted is the only word I can think of.

Will I give up on Fern Michaels? No, I won't. Because based on that first book of hers I read I know she can please me. Just not with this one. But she has so many others, I'll keep searching for another winner.

Finders Keepers, by Fern Michaels

FERN MICHAELS

Synopsis: Raised in a magnificent Charleston house, Jessie Roland wants for nothing. But as she grows into young adulthood, all she feels is loss and a desperate need to break free from the stifling possessiveness of her “parents”. Somewhere, in the deepest part of herself, Jessie believes that the world she has always lived in is not the one she came from…or belongs in.

Now, at age nineteen, she has escaped to Washington, D.C., where no one knows her, and where she is swept into a whirlwind marriage to a Texas senator’s son. But the past will not release Jessie, who is once again haunted by a sense of lost happiness, of simple, tender gestures buried in her memory. Only in Lucas Palmer, a reclusive rancher, will she discover the strength to penetrate the darkness and find her way back to the place she can call home.

Stats for my copy: Mass market paperback, a Zebra Book, published by Kensington Publishing Corp., 1998; 411 pages; received from a BookCrossing member.

My thoughts: About a year ago I read my first Fern Michaels book, LATE BLOOMER, and I loved it. It was an emotional roller coaster. It made me want to find everything else she’s written, and I’ve been steadily collecting her books ever since, though I didn’t read another one until this one. And I’m sorry to say if FINDERS KEEPERS had been the first one I read instead of the second, I probably would not have bothered to look for any others.

The story itself was good. It was an interesting premise. We meet Jessie as a child, growing up within a rich and affluent family, but terribly unhappy. As soon as she is of age, she drives away, and with Sophie’s help, creates a new identity for herself so that her parents won’t be able to find her. That aspect was a little unbelievable to me, and was glossed over. We don’t know how Sophie got this new identity for her, but Sophie is rich and knows people and can get anything done. Despite the fact that Jessie has a new social security number and a fake background to tell people about, she still uses her real name.

Through Sophie’s connections, Jessie gets a job working for a senator, whom she comes to be very fond of and vice versa. One year, knowing she will be alone for Christmas, he invites her to spend the holiday at his ranch in Texas, where she meets his son, Tanner, and Luke, a neighboring rancher. (One little nitpick I had here – the back cover copy says “Lucas Palmer”, but his last name in the book is Holt and the name Palmer never appears.)

Towards the end of the book I stayed up way past my bedtime because I didn’t want to close the book without finding out what happened next. But the writing. Or rather the writing style I guess. There was a lot of dialogue. Which is fine, characters talking to each other is great. The first scene where Jessie meets Tanner and converses with him was hilarious and made me want to see them get together. But often one character would talk and just ramble on. For instance, Jessie would answer the phone and hold a conversation, and we would only get her side of the conversation. Instead of a back and forth, she says something, the other person says something, we only heard her side of it, but she would repeat what the other person said, almost as if narrating the other person’s side so we, the reader, wouldn’t be lost. It was annoying. Even in person though, sometimes one character would begin talking and go on and on, and you know the other person is responding, but instead of that person’s dialog being written down for us to read, the first character would almost narrate the conversation.

And the mothers in this book! They are all over the top! Jessie has grown up with a mother who is incredibly overbearing. She ran every aspect of Jessie’s childhood, and made all of her decision, right down to what clothes to wear, what to eat for her snack, what to do with practically every minute of her time. Growing up, Jessie only had one friend. Sophie’s mother and Jessie’s mother used to be best friends, but apparently drifted apart after Jessie’s family moved away from Georgia. Jessie and Sophie, however, maintained their close friendship, seeing each other during the summer and whenever else they could. While Jessie was at school every day her mother would go through her room. Her father knew she did this, wondering what she could be searching for, but not interfering. When Jessie would come home, she was expected to change into the clothes her mother had laid out on her bed, and then instead of playing like a normal kid, she played games with her mother or did some activity with her. When Jessie’s father gave her a pair of overalls, her mother had a cow, insisting that Jessie take them off and that she cannot possibly appear at the dinner table dressed like that. And on and on and on, until Jessie could not wait to get away.

Then there’s Sophie’s mother, who roamed around the world with her latest boy toy, leaving her daughter home with the household staff. She missed birthdays, Christmas, even her daughter’s college graduation. And the senator’s wife was also incredibly overbearing with her children, but whereas Jessie’s mother loved her to pieces, smothered her with that love and seemed to live only for and to be with Jessie, Tanner’s mother was distant and formal and lived to put on a good appearance for all the neighbors.

Overall, I liked the book, liked the story, despite how implausible it all was. The synopsis hints at a secret about Jessie’s parents, and even though that secret is revealed to us, the reader, in the prologue, I don’t want to say what it is, but it is the driving force of the book, right up to the last chapter.

I will say one last thing that some might construe as a spoiler, so skip this paragraph if you want: I was disappointed when I read the epilogue. I don’t like the way it ended, and how one of the two men just seemed to disappear from Jessie’s life without any explanation.

Oh, and one other comment – if Sandra Brown had taken this plot idea and written the book, I probably would have loved it rather than just liked it. Yeah, I think about stuff like that.

Late Bloomer

FERN MICHAELS

A couple of weekends ago I went to a book sale at my local library with my mom and sister. We went on bag day, where you pay $5 for a paper sack and cram in as many books as you can. My mom bought three bags, and stuffed a few books into my bags as they wouldn't all quite fit in her bags. Later, while going through my bags, I discovered this book that must have been one of hers. I'm seeing her in a couple of days and will give it back to her then, but this morning I decided to read it first.

I am so incredibly glad I made that decision, because I absolutely loved this emotional roller coaster ride of a book. Here's the synopsis from the back cover:

Twenty years after a childhood accident left a permanent shadow over her life, Cady Jordan has returned to her Pennsylvania hometown. Her beloved grandmother Lola, a retired movie star, needs Cady's care -- but soon after arriving at Lola's lavish estate, it's clear that the colorful actress will be Cady's mentor to living life to the fullest. Cady wants nothing more than to come out of her shell, but to do so means resurrecting her lost memories of the day when a foolish stunt ended with a young bully's death and Cady's serious injury -- a tragedy for which her friends held Cady responsible. They're adults now -- a lawyer, a businessman, a stay-at-home mom. And a police chief: Boomer Ward, whose flaring attraction works on Cady's guarded heart. Now, Cady must determine who can be trusted as she draws closer to Boomer and confronts those who wish she'd never returned. Old wounds may be healed, but can Cady close a door on her heartache and embrace a bright new life?

Cady is a lost soul. Her grandmother and the two companions who live with her are characters. You know those old screwball comedies, where funny incident after funny incident happens one after another? There are many scenes in this book that remind of those. As Cady settles into her grandmother's home and begins making contact with her old friends, bits and pieces of her memory come back, and secrets are revealed. The accident is played out for us in the prologue, but throughout the book we are taken into the minds of  Cady, Boomer, and the other three children who were there, and how it affected each of them as they grew up.

I read this book in one day. I literally did not want to put it down. I don't know how I've not read this author before, but she has a long backlist, so there's about 90 more books to add to my already extensive wish list.