Customer Reviews

The Reluctant Suitor

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(59)

 

 

I have to agree with other reviewers. This book was horrable. I too am a big fan having started with 'So worthy my love' and bacame a fan. But since A season beyond a kiss, was beyond boring, I've been hoping that her writting might improve. I have been let down. I think that KW has run out of ideas for her books and just falls back on flowery prose.
Another thing, every time I have seen a Good review for her, it sounds more like a person form PR trying to convice the unaware public that the book is worth the money. Trust me it is not. Buy some of her other books and see for your self that this once great auther did have some talent.

Okay, this book is slow. And the prose goes on forever. And the myriad references to Adriana's beauty are somewhat annoying. But all in all there is hope yet.

Ms. Woodiwiss writes with some humour and I enjoyed some of the various plots, to an extent (once I got past the aforementionned annoying features). Colton and Adrianna's wedding? Totally unexpected and really quite amusing if you think about it.

There are some spooky and also extremely brutal elements (say, drab-delivered babe? BDSM? Yes, it does get heavy) so I wouldn't say this is a bad book. I guess the author just forgot that simpler prose could be very readable, and that neverending description could sometimes kill a story. Other than that, don't put the book down too fast, you might miss some pretty neat stuff.

When I saw this at the library I couldn't believe
I had missed the latest. Not that it mattered!

The previous reviews here are so funny and true.
This book is awful. I didn't finish it and
It made me downright mad! How could this author have written Ashes in the Wind? A Rose in Winter? My personal favorites, but I love Shanna and The Flame and the Flower and The Wolf and the Dove.

I will probably still try to read any more that come out in hopes that the grandeur will appear again but really, WHAT has happened to her?

Fortunately, I bought this book at a discount. I had read the reviews but couldn't believe it was all that bad. It was. Scenes that normally would have inspired Ms. Woodiwiss to elaborate on were casually dismissed in 5 sentences. Plots to new events were explained later on, as an afterthought. At first I thought it was due to the translator that I got discouraged (English -> Dutch) who pleasantly mixed up names and family lines (throughout the book, Adriana was called Samantha or Felicity and Colton was involved in a small bout of multiple personality disorder when he was Roger or Riordan at one time or another) but I must agree with most reviewers. Do not buy this book! If you like Ms Woodiwiss' books, reread any book you have of her. It will keep you satisfied till something better comes along.... Although I do doubt I will buy any book of Ms Woodiwiss any time soon.

Trying to read this book was like trying to swim through mud for me. Ms. Woodiwiss's prose has always been a challenge - in Shanna for instance, "Shanna presented her back," got on my nerves after reading this statement over and over and over again but in The Reluctant Suitor I barely got past the first 100 pages without being sickened of the words "orbs," "brows," and my favorite one to hate, "the beauty." I could swear that someone else wrote this stuff. It is hard to believe that someone would desert his family for 16 years over a disagreement over a 6 year old girl. If Colton could be such a hero in battle, surely he could confront his father on the issue of his betrothal to Adriana rather than run away. Colton isn't very impressive. He is attracted to Adriana initially only because of her looks - he has the usual women in his past too, actresses, widows, camp followers. Yuck. Ms. Woodiwiss has never been my favorite author but her first books were much better than this one. I believe I have purchased my last book by this author.

Has KW has franchised out her name? Who the heck has been writing these latest books??!! They're like winning entries in a romance novel spoofing contest.

I love Kathleen Woodiwiss of old - books like A Rose in Winter, Shanna, and Come Love A Stranger are some of the best in romance out there, I believe. She had passion, strength and the ability to craft a story so incredible...This novel, I struggled through the first few chapters and couldn't force myself to continue it. I really wanted to get into the story, but the overdone language was a huge barrier. The characters were a bit flighty and I couldn't seem to muster up enough emotion to care about them. As sad as it is, this is not the Kathleen Woodiwiss of old and I will think twice before automatically picking up another of her books. :(

I read Kathleen Woodiwiss's earlier books -- Wolf and the Dove, Flame and the Flower, Shanna. Those were her best. The last two books that she has put out have been horrible, and this book was the worst. I thought after her last book, this would be much better. I could not get over the fact that she kept going over how "Colton acted when he left home and how horrible Adrianna felt." That line went on throughout half the book." "Adrianna couldn't have been that devastated -- she couldn't wait to marry him. If it was that bad -- she should have married someone else." After reading this book, which I took out from the library (Thank God), I have given up reading anything that Ms. Woodiwiss puts out.

This is the WORST Kathleen Woodiwiss novel yet! Hackneyed and full of cliches, it is a chore to read this book. I do not know why I keep going back to it! Perhaps because I so admire her earlier works, such as "Wolf and the Dove," and "Shanna." This book, however, is so mired in the superficial beauty of its characters that no attention is payed to any sense of plot or (God Forbid) believability. If I read one more line about deep gray orbs, I may give in to temptation and allow my puppy to use the book as a teething toy.

"He could only marvel at her willingness to offer her virginity upon the fleshly horn of passion so that they could complete their union, and yet, she had done just that in her sacrificial desire to be one with him." I am seriously considering the possibility that this book is really meant to be a spoof. At the very least it has to be a ghost-writer...no one who has written well in the past could produce such wretched prose accidentally. And the tediousness of it! The character's first meeting goes something like this: 1. He says something. 2. She reflects back on a similar thing he said as a child. 3. She remembers what how much she adored him as a child. 4. Some other suitor looks on angrily. 5. We learn what this other suitor was like at a child, what he's doing now, and what he ate for breakfast. 6. The dogs bristle at the other suitor's response, and we learn the life story, eating habits, favorite chew-toys, and position of every hair on the head of these dogs who on one page are 8 and 10 years old respectively and on the next page remember the man who has been away for 16 years. 7. He looks at her and muses about her slammin' body, in sentences containing twelve verbs, fifteen adjectives, and the word "orbs" used at least twice per page to describe both breasts and eyeballs, sometimes so interchangeably you don't know which is which. 8. She responds to his original comment with a warbling laugh or trilling rejoinder, while you've totally forgotten what he even said because it was twelve pages ago and you've been trying to decide whether you should laugh in derision or cry in despair or simply slap the author upside the head review-wise on Amazon. Guess which one I chose. :-)