VOWS OF PASSION - Bella McFarland
Genesis/Indigo
April 2004
SYNOPSIS: Star struck couple Cara and Leon finally get their relationship on the right track only to discover that a deranged psycho is hell-bent on destroying Cara.
CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE: (2) Dee Y. Stewart
REVIEW: Hot summer presses are steaming up bookstores with stories of exotic locations and sultry romances, which will give sisters a great deal of vacation reads to choose from. Bella McFarland’s VOWS OF PASSION has the name and an interesting location that could garner a-summer-must read status. But it doesn’t.
Four years after Cara Reynolds leaves Leon Hightower, the love and hate of her life, he’s back. And she can’t run away from their adulterous past, because her position at the International Laboratories for Research of Endangered Species (ILRES) depends upon the both of them having an amicable working relationship. But with a past as heated as theirs, their relationship can’t remain professional, especially when weird things begin to happen in the lab…especially when someone endangers her life. Will she trust Leon again? Give him a second chance? Is he in on the mischief at ILRES?
Although medical thrillers aren’t new genres, they certainly are new to African American romance readers. But it takes more than scientific jargon and poorly place red herrings for me to give it a better than average review. The story was hard to follow. Even after I read the last line of the book I still didn’t care about Dr. Carina Reynolds or believed in this love she had for Leon Hightower. McFarland jumped in and out the characters heads so fast I was confused most of the time, and it took me almost two months to complete, because I needed to dissect what was actually happening (No pun intended). The passion, lackluster and the vows- I couldn’t find them.
The only thing that interested me was the fact that the book took place in Nairobi, Kenya. I expected to learn a little about the country, its landscape and how it all tied into the book. But the book could have been set anywhere. That’s just how little information I received about this wonderful city.
What I did like was how McFarland tied in the theme of pollution and how large cities and huge chemical plants add to the water pollution, how modernization has created endangered species in Africa. If only she could have expounded upon this and related it to Cara and Leon’s relationship somehow. Then she would have something incredible here.
On the other hand, this book is filled with forbidden lust and sexual tension, so it has a bit of a sizzle for a summer read.
dee@romanceincolor.com (26th July 2004)