Sandra Brown: Mirror Image

Mirror Image: A-
Avery Daniels/ Carole Rutledge and Tate Rutledge

A jet crash handed Avery Daniels a golden opportunity. Mistaken for Carole Rutledge, the badly injured Avery has found that plastic surgery has given her Carole's face, the famous senatorial candidate for a husband, and a powerful Texas dynasty for in-laws. She makes the shattering discovery that someone close to the senator plans to assassinate him. Now to save the life of the man she loves, Avery must live another woman's life-and risk her own. (amazon)

Let me start out by saying that I don’t particularly like politicians. I don’t particularly like salesmen or lawyers or any person whose profession is to vie for others’ votes, money, assets, whatever. (Okay, so I guess I can only marry an artist and a hippie piano player…)

A strong part of this book is Tate’s political campaign and his fight to become a Senator. It’s intense. A lot of kissing up, a lot of speech-making. A lot of “looking good in front of others” type deal. However, Tate wasn’t one of those politicians – he was real and down-to-earth, which as a romance hero, he’d better be.

I really enjoyed the premise and plot of this story. Avery is in a plane crash and when she regains consciousness, she finds that she has been mistaken for Tate’s selfish-bitch-of-a-wife. However, due to medical circumstances, she’s unable to tell Tate and the doctors the truth. She gets knocked out from medication and assuming that she is indeed Carole, Tate’s family sends a plastic surgeon and surgery is done on her face.

She awakens to find that she really looks like Carole – her face has been reconstructed to look like her.

Before she can tell anyone the truth, she discovers there is a scheme to kill Tate. As a former journalist, she sniffs a huge story and chooses to stay silent. Also, she finds herself falling in love with Tate more and more everyday.

The thing is, Carole was a manipulative, selfish person – Tate saw the real Carole after they were wed. (Before, he apparently thought with that part of the male anatomy that males usually make decisions with.) Tate can’t believe the change that he sees in “Carole” after the accident – it’s almost as if she’s a different person! (Oh, if he only knew…)

Avery’s struggle to convince Tate of the complete change in character is an interesting journey; so is reading of how they fall in love with each other.

I didn't completely love Ms. Brown's writing style; I felt it was a little choppy and course, but the book itself was published a long time ago (I want to say a good fifteen years? Late 80s/ early 90s), so I'd assume it is one of her earlier works.

Nevertheless, it’s a good, refreshing read – one of Ms. Brown’s better works. (yay!)

Sandra Brown: Ricochet

Ricochet C-

Elise Laird and Detective Duncan Hatcher

Hunky yet sensitive Detective Duncan Hatcher is called to investigate the gorgeous and wildly manipulative Elise Laird when she kills a burglar in her elegant home, supposedly in self-defense. Complicating the case is that Mrs. Laird is the trophy wife of a patrician judge who dislikes our hero. Worse, her account of the murder is somewhere between sketchy and laughable.

Hatcher finds himself falling for the mysterious Mrs. Laird, even as he uncovers each new fact that seems to suggest that the murder was intentional and the burglar, Gary Ray Trotter, no stranger. Hatcher doubts Mrs. Laird's increasingly weak explanations, but he still can't help thinking about her body...

How to say this in the most kind of ways?

Don’t read this book because it’s not worth your time. You’d probably have more fun weeding all of your acquaintances’ backyards for the next twenty weekends.

Ricochet was another downer, whish is even more disappointing because I know Ms. Brown is capable of writing captivating stories, dangit!

Duncan Hatcher is a detective. He is a good man, working for justice and liberty. He dislikes a judge named something Laird because Laird is making foolish judgment calls. Judge Laird is married to Elise, someone Duncan is highly attracted to.

When there is a murder at her house, everyone agrees that Elise shot the burglar out of self defense. But she comes to Duncan, saying that she is scared that the judge is trying to kill her, a preposterous statement since the judge seems wholly in love and infatuated with his young, hot wife.

Duncan struggles with his feelings for the already married Elise. He is wary of her motives – she may be a cold-blooded killer who is playing the detective on case, or she might be telling him the truth. It is a problem that plagues Duncan and the unthinkable happens when he agrees to meet her at an abandoned house in the middle of the night. This event is predictable – from the start of the book, your eyes itch for Duncan and Elise to get together (after all, Duncan is the hero and Elise is clearly the heroine. They have to end up together, right?). But when the scene came, I was in a mixed frenzy – partially excited that they were together, but still superbly distressed because she’s married.

I figured out what would happen in the end for Elise and Duncan to be redeemed of this adulterous act, but the fact that the honorable Duncan wasn’t able to resist Elise is something that stayed on my mind. On the one hand, he sure was overcome by lust for Elise, only showing how much he was risking to be with her. On the other hand, he was foolish since he himself knew that there was a good chance Elise was counting on him to think with his whoo-hoo.

There was also the interesting tidbit of Duncan being the good son of a pastor. (Do pastor’s son act in such ways?) I know that it is a grossly huge stereotype to think that the children of pastors ought to be goody-goods, but at the same time, I don’t recall pastors raising their children to be promiscuous…(not saying that Duncan was unspeakably promiscuous, but….)

As you can see, this book had me in titters, really over nothing.

But this isn’t the reason for the less than pleasant grade. The romance was not believable to be love, but it was clear that the characters had full lust for each other. So when they told each other that they loved each other, I thought, “bullocks!” The suspense was good – I was confused as to whether Elise was evil or not, but there were times when I desperately wanted to skip ahead to the parts with Elise and Duncan… parts that weren’t really even that romantic.

Read, if you must, but have low expectations. Then maybe, you won’t be a sorely disappointed.

Sandra Brown: The Switch

Sandra Brown: The Switch C-
Gillian & Chief Hart

Identical twins are fair game for a thriller writer, and in The Switch, queen of suspense Sandra Brown (The Alibi, Standoff, Fat Tuesday) makes the most of an intricate setup involving Gillian and Melina Lloyd, a pair of thirtysomething Dallas beauties. When Gillian hears her biological clock ticking, she puts herself in the hands of the world-famous Waters Clinic and is artificially inseminated (as described in a somewhat plodding first chapter that omits no detail of the procedure). The action picks up when Gillian switches places with her twin, a media escort, and chauffeurs sexy astronaut Chief Hart around town. It turns out to be a fatal attraction, and suspicion falls on Chief when Gillian's mutilated body is found the next day.

The dead woman's smarmy and enigmatic boyfriend, Jem Hennings, has a vested interest in focusing police efforts on Hart, but Melina has her own reasons for thinking him wrong. Jem's connection with a charismatic preacher known as Brother Gabriel is at the heart of this mildly creepy mystery, in which the plucky Melina tracks Brother Gabriel to his lair and uncovers his diabolical plot while simultaneously revealing her own dark secret. The ending is telegraphed well in advance… (amazon.com)

After being impressed with Sandra Brown’s Envy and Mirror Image, I prayed that The Switch would be as equally excellent.

I was wrong. (This is where I start sobbing uncontrollably.)

While the premise of the story was exciting, I couldn’t help but to have problems with the characters.

Gillian, wanting to be a mother, is artificially inseminated at a famous clinic because her longtime boyfriend, Jem, has had a vasectomy. That night, she and her twin switch places and she takes Melina’s place as a media escort to handsome astronaut “Chief” Hart.

It is no surprise that the attraction between Chief and Gillian is thick. One thing led to another, I suppose, and they sleep together. Disconnect 1: Gillian doesn’t seem to be the type of person to sleep with strangers on first dates – especially because she has a loving boyfriend. Even though she is pretending to be Melina, I feel that this is a very out-of-character deed for Gillian and something that I don’t understand because she loves Jem – and has told Melina repeatedly of how wonderful Jem is.

Gillian, you cheater and liar! I don’t care if it’s suggested for couples to sleep together on the night of the insemination (so that if the woman gets pregnant, then there is a possibility that the child was from the hanky panky and not the insemination) and that you couldn’t sleep with Jem because he’s sterile – what a way to betray your boyfriend’s trust. Creep.

So then Gillian is found dead the next morning, to Chief’s chagrin, because amazingly, he’s fallen in love with Gillian. (“love at first sight” is another disconnect for me, but it’s believed by many and common, so I let it pass). He spends many hours with Melina to track down Gillian’s killer – Melina and Chief both want revenge and the police are doing a crappy job of everything, so they decide to work together to bring about justice.

But the more time he spends with Melina, the more lustful thoughts lurk in his head. Furthermore, he questions his feelings for Melina – was he falling in love with her too? Of course, Melina has fallen in love with the lameface.

When Melina and Chief do the hanky panky, I can’t help but to think that Melina got used. Chief may be falling in love with Melina, but he’s already lost it to Gillian. Don’t tell me crap about falling in love with two people – that’s a pickle as is; the fact that the two women Chief is in love with are twins makes it incestuous and gross. Ew, imagine sharing your twin sister’s lover – the twin sister that you love and adore dearly, the sister who is so close to your heart that she is a part of you…

To add to this slightly disturbing procession of events, when Chief is in the throes of passion with Melina, he yells someone’s name. I’ll let you guess whose name he yelled.

…yea, what a douchebag. Way to satisfy your lust by hooking up with the identical carbon-copy twin of the woman you fell in love with.

While the ending might bring everything together, the premise in which the characters acted is disturbing. To me, it doesn’t matter if Captain Hook ends up being the good guy in the very end; if Wendy thought that Hook was the bad guy BUT does the hanky panky with him anyway, that is a breach of moral goodness for Wendy, in my book.

It’s like that. It doesn’t matter for the ending, really, because we all know that somehow, things work out because they’re romances and HEAs are necessary. It’s the idea that the characters have of each other that determine motivations and drives – that is crucial. Both Gillian and Chief breached the line of moral goodness.

Because of this, I find the book merely amusing.

Sandra Brown: Envy

Envy: A


The prologue of a novel arrives in the Manhattan offices of a book editor, who's intrigued enough to chase its mysterious author, identified only by his initials, to his decrepit plantation on an island off the Georgia Coast. That's the first clue that fiction is stranger than fact; few publishers (if any) would go to that sort of trouble for anything less than a new J.D. Salinger novel. But bestselling author Sandra Brown makes the most of her far-fetched premise, setting up a convoluted plot that keeps the reader engrossed despite its flaws and foibles. Maris Matherly-Reed is more than an editor. She's also the beloved daughter of the publishing house's highly respected and successful leader, and the wife of Matherly Press's second-in-command, the smooth, suave, double-dealing Noah Reed. Reed, it develops, is the real target of the literary scam set up by the reclusive writer of the novel whose opening pages so captivate Reed's spouse. P.M.E., the writer, has a score to settle...


Envy was my first Sandra Brown and came to me recommended by fellow book-lovers; I was not disappointed.

Maris Matherly-Reed is a high-profile editor and the daughter of a publishing house mogul. When she is sent an anonymous manuscript – a prologue to a story, she is intrigued and set upon finding the author. Little does she know the adventure she is about to embark on when she sets out to meet the mysterious “P.M.E.”

Brown deftly weaves in the story that P.M.E. has written along with the journey that Maris sets. She also reveals, little by little, who P.M.E. is and what he is trying to do. Envy is charged with intrigue – just as Maris is intrigued by P.M.E., readers are intrigued by the tangle of the real story. It’s not until the end that everything comes together, quite cleverly.

I’m not intentionally trying to be vague, but it’s also not my desire to reveal the twists and the “Oh!”s of the story. It is a satisfying read charged with sexual tension and suspsense; I didn’t want to put it down. Highly recommended.