DEEPLY

Mechelle Avey

Yeva Corp

September 2002

1-58314-367-X

(3+) Leslie Cannon

PLOT SYNOPSIS: 

REVIEW: 

Unfortunately love is not a neat, tidy emotion that comes wrapped in a pretty package and stays properly put in the box of confinement that society has laid out for it.  It is this deep message that Mechelle Avey conveys in her novel, DEEPLY.  She shows us love’s knack for showing up at the most inappropriate times. This is the very thing that happens when the book’s heroine, attorney Jewel Turnquist, finds herself attracted to her client’s arch-enemy, Sterling Matheson.

Sterling Matheson is the epitome of tall, dark and handsome.  Add to that the fact that he is a multi-millionaire, and readers will have no problem empathizing with Jewel’s dilemma. 

But make no mistake about it, Jewel’s full lips, deep, rich, brown eyes and enchanting smile create no less of a dilemma for Sterling.  In fact it creates even more so of a dilemma since Sterling fully believes that Jewel’s client and his late-brother’s girlfriend, Palomita, is attempting to blackmail his family and destroy the Matheson name.

It is this complicated scenario that serves as the backdrop for the interaction between DEEPLY’s hero and heroine.  Sterling, who had chastised his brother for falling in love with “the wrong person,” begins learning firsthand what his brother had come to know—love doesn’t always arrive complication-free.  While Sterling fights to protect his family honor, he finds himself in a dual fight, as he tries to ward off the natural attraction that seems to be pulling him toward the beautiful, sassy female attorney.  Readers will enjoy the stolen, sensual glances that transpire; along with the oftentimes humorous self-chastening that immediately follows.

Ms. Avey provides readers with well-rounded characters in DEEPLY.  Characters who are by no means perfect and clearly make mistakes throughout the novel.  But the characters’ true character shines forth as Ms. Avey allows readers to see how the characters accept responsibility for their past mistakes, and move forward with their lives.

DEEPLY has an even-tempo pace throughout the novel that works well with the chosen storyline.  Ms. Avey also does a good job of painting a clear picture of the character’s surroundings, so that readers will have no problem visualizing the setting for which different scenes are taking place.

DEEPLY's secondary characters are quite a diverse group. Most are portrayed in such a manner that they are quite believable.   I struggled some with Palomita’s brother, Enrique.  The manner in which he’s portrayed seems to jump from one extreme to the other so fast that it actually takes away from the story.  Enrique’s tough-nose character lends spice and flavor to the story in the beginning, and actually gets the plot rolling.  But then he’s changed into a nice guy so quickly that it left me with the feeling that his character was merely used and after he had gotten things going, there was no real use for the bad-boy any more, so he was cleaned up to fit in.  The cleaning up would not have been a bad thing, had it not been done in such rapid formation.

But make no mistake about it.  Readers will yet walk away from DEEPLY with profound respect for Ms. Avey’s literary talent.  The way she has taken a tough, and sometimes taboo topic and weaved a very powerful tale of love and forgiveness shows her potential for leaving a legacy in the literary world.

DEEPLY is a book well worthy of reading.

leslie@romanceincolor.net (25th August 2002)