MORE THAN YOU KNOW - Eboni Snoe
BET/Arabesque
(2+)
SYNOPSIS: When a brainy beauty takes up samba dancing to prove she can be sexy, her life sets off on an unpredictable path that leads to a passionate--but complicated--relationship with a man who has a troubled past.
CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE: (2+) Jennifer Brathwaite
REVIEW: Eboni Snoe’s MORE THAN YOU KNOW is a story about following an impulse to the place you were meant to be as well as stepping out of your own shoes and into someone else’s. During the course of the text these are the challenges and the accomplishments of the book’s main characters – Mara Scott and Jairo Camara.
In the story Mara experiences a personal disappointment which makes her want to shake up her life and her image and she decides to join a samba class. During her samba experience she meets the man of her daydreams who seems almost too good to be true. However, when she encounters him in the boardroom rather than on the samba floor, her perception of him drastically changes and she wonders which man is the real one and if he is in fact the right man for her. In spite of these challenges the two decide to try and flesh out a relationship with each other.
While the book has enough characters to create interest and conflict, unfortunately they are weak and poorly developed. The reader isn’t really made to care about them or their problems. The character of Jairo’s father is drawn with the most depth and thus is the most interesting. Mara and Jairo are given the barest outline and then dropped into the story with the expectation that the story will make them interesting rather than their being interesting being used as a tool to improve and move the story.
The novel’s pacing is an element not really attended to or seemingly thought about to any extent. It is difficult to say if this can simply be characterised as the story moving too fast or just a lack of substance in the text.
Setting and dialogue are components that are better used but could not be categorised as strong. The setting is relatively effective such as the backdrop of the dance competition and the warm description of Roberto’s family home. More than once in the book the dialogue comes across as forced and a little flowery and melodramatic. It is, however, nicely applied again with Roberto’s family and their broken English accents.
All told, MORE THAN YOU KNOW is not an engaging read where one can become invested in the story and its characters. The book is scarce on romance and chemistry and can only really be said to be stimulating when the text turns to discussion of Jairo’s past, i.e., his childhood and his relationship with his stepsister.
In truth the best part of the book is the dynamic between Jairo and his father. Unfortunately MORE THAN YOU KNOW isn’t a buy I could recommend.
jennifer@romanceincolor.com (1st September 2004)