Fool Me Once by Fern Michaels
I'm never happy when I read I book that doesn't quite "do it" for me.
Eler Beth and I attended a library sale recently, and I found a nice, big, hard copy with dust jacket of Fool Me Once by Fern Michaels. I, of course, recognized the name, Fern Michaels, although I couldn't immediately think of what I had read by her. I knew she was a fairly prolific writer, and had a vague feeling that she mostly wrote romance novels. The blurb on the jacket sounded good, and it didn't cost much, and the money went to charity, so I thought, why not?
On a scale of "Yuck" to "Super!" I would have to give it an "Eh!", nothing more.
The plot is decent; I like the way she uses the dogs in the story -- I can tell she loves dogs, especially Yorkies! But there are things about the way she develops her characters that seems very contrived to me. I found myself, about halfway through, doing some skimming before I finally started reading each word again. There were some twists that I didn't like -- not plot twists, but character twists. Some of the characters suddenly acted in a way that was totally unexpected, and there really didn't seem to be any need for it. How they acted didn't really affect the plot of the book, they would just suddenly say or do something that seemed to have been written in just for the heck of it. I almost got the feeling that the author was rather bored with the book herself.
I persevered and made sure I read the whole thing, though. It did have a fairly satisfactory conclusion, except for the behavior of one minor character at the very end. It is a long book, so if you like to listen to audio books on a long trip or at work, I would recommend getting this one. Another thing I did like about it was that there were no graphic sex scenes; well, no sex scenes at all, really. I don't like sex scenes. I'd rather have that left to my imagination.
I'm not sure how long this one will stay on my shelves. I doubt I'll ever read it again, so it may get freecycled soon. I will, however, make a point to check out some other Fern Michaels books to see if like any of them. Maybe I'll find one that I've read before (because I'm pretty sure I have read something by her before!).
