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A FOREVER PASSION Angela Winters BET/Arabesque February 2000 (5) Melanie Schuster |
Contemporary Romance |
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PLOT SYNOPSIS: |
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REVIEW: |
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One of the most gratifying things about reading and reviewing romance
novels is seeing the growth and development of the newer writers.
From their first efforts which are always enjoyable, sometimes
remarkable, we look forward to more and more from the authors we admire. In Angela Winters new book, A FOREVER
PASSION, the fruit of her planting is ripe for the picking.
This book is wonderful from start to finish and is in, in my opinion, her
best yet. Angela takes a complex
approach in presenting the heroine’s inner struggle and does so masterfully.
This is a book that I could not put down until I had turned the very last page
with a sigh of bliss. If I may be
permitted to lapse into the vernacular for a moment, Ms Winters threw down on A
FOREVER PASSION! In the beginning the story is simple enough:
Sydney Tanner is an academic whiz and a loner, working on her MBA.
To fulfill a requirement and to earn money for the summer, she agrees to
take on a project for a genealogy class. Her effervescent young friend
Gabrielle Hart volunteers her prominent family as a case study and before she
knows what has happened, Sydney finds herself living in the Hart’s opulent
home and clerking at the law firm of Gabrielle’s brother Keith.
She also finds herself intrigued by their older brother, Marcus Hart, a
handsome congressman. Marcus is equally drawn to Sydney and wants to get to know her in all the
ways a man can know a woman. Because
of her past, however, Sydney is not eager to be involved with anyone on the long
term, especially not someone like Marcus. A
lifetime of emotional abuse has convinced her that relationships are too costly
in the long run and made her leery. As if the tension between Sydney and Marcus is not enough, there is
pressure from his family to abandon the research into the Hart family tree.
His icy, disapproving mother and his largely absent father make it
difficult for Sydney to complete her required research.
No one really wants her to delve too deeply, and to keep the family
secrets, someone is willing to go to unconscionable lengths to prevent Sydney
from revealing her discoveries. The characters in this book are carefully drawn so that the reader gets to know a richly depicted gallery of eccentrics. Honey, Dallas and Dynasty have nothing on the Harts when it comes to drama! The lively Gabrielle, the ambitious Keith and his laid back twin sister Kelly all pale next to their forbidding and complicated mother Victoria. This is who they meant when they coined the word ‘diva’. And balancing it all out is the matriarch of the family, Great-Aunt May, a wise and warm woman who holds the key to the deepest family secret of all. The most compelling aspect of the book for me was the way Ms Winters gave
brief, poignant glimpses of Sydney’s horrible childhood; in a seamless,
non-intrusive way she gives us entrance to Sydney’s very soul.
Just when the reader begins to wonder why Sydney feels this way or that,
a chilling explanation comes forth. Without
disrupting the flow of the text in any way, Ms Winters gives a flawless
depiction of a lifetime of emotional deprivation that makes Sydney into the
determined woman we meet in A FOREVER PASSION. I also appreciated the research that had to take place to make the book
as accurate and plausible as it is. The
basis for the genealogy project and the steps that Sydney took in pursuing it
made me once again think seriously about digging into my own family history. I like Sydney very much. She
is strong, focused, vulnerable, feminine and genuinely nice.
I liked Marcus, too and I was on their side throughout the whole book.
Even the not-so-nice characters are the kind of people you can’t help
but want to read about, kind of the way the Ewings and the Carringtons were on
those great old nighttime serials. This
is an engaging, passionate, exciting book that makes me very excited about Ms
Winters’ next endeavors. I
can’t wait to see what else she has in store for us.
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23rd February 2002 |
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