Guest post by Vini
There is no surprising plot in a romance novel. That is both their sin and secret.
A romance novel offers the comfort of fantasy where love and life ends well.
So the success of a romance novel lies in its twists in plot, in the dialogue, in character development, in its writing.
What it cannot be is boring and simplistic in its handling of the plot.
I have read 50 pages of Kat Martin‘s re-released book DEEP BLUE (2005) and I cannot read another page.
It is agony.
I am going to get my $7.99 back. Plus tax.
As an avid reader of romance novels, nothing tolls the death of a book faster than heated glances, a random emergency which sends the heroine to the Caribbean to hook up with an ex-seal treasure seeker who is attached to an archeologist?!
If you dabble in implausibility, the characters better sing off the page. But Martin’s Hope Sinclair is a heroine who is poorly developed and is a loser. She is paperboard thin.
Hope is a reporter. Her home is ransacked and it is her editor that thinks of the reason why: a story that she is working on. Ta-da!
Her reaction to her home in shambles — or being pulled from a hot story — creates an equally vapid response. This investigative reporter on the brink of a major corruption story has no instincts, no nose for the story and blissfully goes off to a happy piece in the Caribbean.
The journalist I know would sell their Granny to stay on the scent of a truly hot scoop. I remember going on errands with my husband — a former reporter — who would follow the lights and sirens of any fire or police who crossed our path. Reporters have a calling, which makes them like crazy rabid dogs (but in a good way).
That is why Hope Sinclair is a wash-out. And if you can’t love the heroine, there is nothing else to attach to and the story is lost.
Kat Martin knows how to write a good book, and I own about five of her novels which are good, but she did not do so with the DEEP BLUE.
Verdict: The book deserves to be returned.
The Red Pen of Doom 