Finally!

Well, I finally did it.

I finished Whispering Rock by Robyn Carr and I'm at 20 books read for the year. At this rate I'll be lucky to hit 40 books by December.

Hey now, I don't like to set lofty goals you know. I should rename this blog 'The Proud Underachiever'.

Cindy Blurb: The heroine's name is Brie and she is a DA for a huge city (I'm not looking it up or it'll ruin my image). She was dumped by her cheating husband about a year ago and lost a huge trial but the worst is that she is brutally beaten and raped. This happens off the page and is not graphic except when it is being explained to the hero and her family.

Mike, meanwhile, is an ex-cop, marine, superhero of some sort who was shot in the line of duty. Or while out hunting. Can't remember. (Nah, he's the hero, so of course he was shot while hanging from a helicopter yelling 'Die mofos!!') Anyways, he has been recuperating in Pleasantville - wait, Virgin River actually and has been falling head over heels in love with his best friend's sister Brie.

The opening of the story is Mike finding out about Brie's attack and then rushing to the hospital. Here we start to meet the cast of characters (in the thousands) who will now occupy every other page and steal the limelight from the H/H.

In a nutshell, Mike is patient and brings Brie back around over months (they see each other every few weeks for lunch) and instead of learning more about these two people and what makes them tick, we are given a plethora of glimpses into other people's lives and problems. I had to check the back of the book a few times to figure out who the H/H really were because there were pages and pages where neither character made an appearance.

HEA occurs, the end.

This book has been following me around for weeks and tonight I just wanted to finish it. Not the books fault, just real life intruding but I liked the characters enough to want to know what happened. So that's good news cause if I hadn't cared I could have tossed the book back into the TBR pile and not worried.

I think I may have had a clue that this book wasn't really a romance before I opened it but the blurb sucker punched me into re-thinking this. That kind of screw up usually leaves me disappointed and frustrated. For the most part frustration is what I felt.

Like I said, there were pages and pages where Brie and Mike weren't even mentioned or part of the story for that matter. There were just too many people running around and I get that this is the third in a series of books but not only are you re-visiting every person who ever landed on a page, you are meeting those who have only been talked about.

Cast of characters list from memory:

Jack and Mel and baby - I think they actually had more page time than Mike and Brie and I think their book was the first in the series.
Preacher and his wife - book two in series. Had almost equal face time as Mike and Brie
Tom and Brenda - teenagers in love
Another couple that were teenagers in love in a previous book
Paul and Vanni and now a baby - set up for a future book.
Gad, then there was Vanni's dad and brother, other men who arrived with Paul, shit how many people are we at .... 15 people, oh wait!, there were members of Brie's family who had parts to play also soooo, let's say 18 to be safe.

That's 16 more people than I need in a romance book.

Just saying.

Also, Kristie nailed it when she talked about how these men are too perfect. In fact, the women in the books are close to normal. You know, PMS, morning sickness, bitchiness in general. The men meanwhile, are honorable, know their 'women' (ugh) and how to deal with them when they are in a mood (double ugh), oh and they were all 'playas' but now they are happily shackled to their women. Bleck.

All that said, I will read at least the first book in this series. I'm wavering between a B- and a C+ for this one. It's hard to grade a book a C when it at least kept you reading. In the end though I did skip about 30 pages without missing anything. Okay, maybe a trial and the part when the teenage rapist (should mention this was another subplot) was caught but I wasn't exactly caring about all that anyways.

Screw it.

Straight C for this one but I'm not giving up on this author yet.

Next up is something breezy and easy to read.

Probably Evanovich.

Or Dr. Suess.