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EBONY EYES - Kei Swanson Genesis/Love Spectrum November 2006 |
SYNOPSIS: Bookstore owner Corie Rickman's evil ex has come back looking for the evidence she kept of his criminal activity. Japanese-American police lieutenant Laine Tanizaki is working undercover to atone for a mistake, and as soon he and Corie meet, the attraction begins. But will it end when each learns the other's secret?
CONTEMPORARY INTERRACIAL ROMANCE: |1+| La-Tessa Montgomery
REVIEW: Japanese American Laine Tanizaki is undercover for the
last time to honor the memory of his best friend and partner who was
gunned down in the line of duty. Laine is posing as the assistant
manager at a burger joint in an attempt to infiltrate the narcotics ring
currently operating out of the mall. Getting to know Corie Rickman, a
bookstore owner and only heir of the most prominent African American
family in LA, is an added benefit. Laine and Corie are inexplicably
drawn together, but both are harboring secrets. Laine is on assignment
posing as a drug dealer, while Corie is running from her abusive, crime
lord ex-husband. Will these two be able to keep their secrets while
sharing their hearts?
After reading the synopsis, I was very excited and eager to read EBONY
EYES. To my disappointment, it fell short of delivering the action and
romance I was expecting. This is due mainly, in part, to the book’s
pacing, the two dimensional lead characters, and the author’s writing
style. The plot is not well executed and the themes of interracial
dating and getting over one’s own demons are not explored to their full
potential. While the story starts out with bang, the pace quickly slows
to a crawl for the remainder of the story. The use of repetitive
narration only serves to further slow the action down. If a good deal of
the information conveyed with the narration were replaced with dialog,
character interaction, and better transitions, I believe EBONY EYES
would have been much more exciting.
From the onset, I was looking forward to getting to know Laine and Corie.
I was interested in seeing how they would deal with both the pressures
of an interracial relationship and the burdens of their individual
secrets. As leads, they never quite did it for me; I found them to be
very flat and two dimensional. The chemistry simply wasn’t there for me
and I found that they fell into a monotonous and very predictable cycle
early on in the story. The secondary characters added very little to
plot and I found everyone’s dialog to be trite and awkward.
Overall, I was very disappointed in EBONY EYES because of the excessive
use of narration, awkward dialog, and the superficial exploration of its
themes. In short, I found it to be repetitive and lacking in the
substance that I look for in a good romance.
reviewer@romanceincolor.com |18th September 2006