Exes and Ohs

Exes and Ohs
Average customer rating:

Light, fluffy reading

Great Read!

Cute and very funny

A Good Book Despite A Few Flaws...

Strong start, very iffy finish

Exes and Ohs
Beth Kendrick
Manufacturer: Downtown Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0743470354

Book Description

exit the groom...

Child psychologist Gwen Traynor has learned the hard way that "perfect" men aren't always what they seem. After being dumped the night before her wedding, she's understandably wary of diving back into the dating pool. But when she meets Alex Coughlin, she's convinced her luck is changing. He's smart, handsome, funny -- an ideal rebound guy. She doesn't intend to fall in love with him, but scintillating dates and mind-blowing physical chemistry have a way of winning a girl over.

enter the ex...

Just as things are heating up with Alex, Gwen meets her newest patient -- a precocious preschooler whose chaotic soap opera-actress of a mother, Harmony, sounds an awful lot like one of Alex's crazy ex-girlfriends. Mostly because she is one of Alex's crazy ex-girlfriends. Unfortunately for Gwen, Harmony has a secret that plunges them all into a real-life daytime drama, complete with sex, lies, and Vegas elopements. With Harmony determined to reunite with Alex and Gwen's ex-fiancé begging for a second chance, only one thing is certain:

New loves and old flames are an explosive combination.

Download Description

"exit the groom... Child psychologist Gwen Traynor has learned the hard way that ""perfect"" men aren't always what they seem. After being dumped the night before her wedding, she's understandably wary of diving back into the dating pool. But when she meets Alex Coughlin, she's convinced her luck is changing. He's smart, handsome, funny -- an ideal rebound guy. She doesn't intend to fall in love with him, but scintillating dates and mind-blowing physical chemistry have a way of winning a girl over. enter the ex... Just as things are heating up with Alex, Gwen meets her newest patient -- a precocious preschooler whose chaotic soap opera-actress of a mother, Harmony, sounds an awful lot like one of Alex's crazy ex-girlfriends. Mostly because she is one of Alex's crazy ex-girlfriends. Unfortunately for Gwen, Harmony has a secret that plunges them all into a real-life daytime drama, complete with sex, lies, and Vegas elopements. With Harmony determined to reunite with Alex and Gwen's ex-fiancé begging for a second chance, only one thing is certain: New loves and old flames are an explosive combination. "

Customer Reviews:

Light, fluffy reading.......2007-09-17

I had read Fashionably Late and found it a cute story that was fairly clean in the romance department (which unfortunately is hard to find). I read Exes and Ohs, hoping this was still true. Though it was a little racier than Fashionably Late, it was still pretty tame for chick-lit. The story was cute and enjoyable- a light and fluffy read. (I started it at night and stayed up until I finished.) The plot was pretty predictable but I loved the characters; the author has a real knack for describing them so well that you have a very vivid mental picture of them. You feel personally involved in their lives and thoughts, that it is hard to put down (even though there's nothing all that exciting happening plot wise). Gwen is earning her doctorate in child psychology and while we don't get to see her in action that much, it's still fun to `watch.' And the kids were very cute- I guess just kid, we really only see her interact with Leo. Gwen is a very interesting heroine. She reminds me of Becky from the Shopaholic series, in that she's a bit on bumbling, clumsy, cute, and uses odd/at times stupid logic.

Overall a good light weekend read, but nothing outstanding. The title is the most clever and original aspect of an otherwise okay chick lit read. You could do worse but I'm hoping for better.

Great Read!.......2007-09-10

This was a good book! I read it on vacation and truly enjoyed it! I liked Nearlyweds better, but this is definitely a great read. I will recommend it to all of my friends.

Cute and very funny.......2007-08-09

Typical chick-lit, but in the best way! I liked the dialogue and she makes some off-the-wall pop-culture references that made me smile. If you are looking for a light, happy read, give this book a shot. You'll enjoy it!

A Good Book Despite A Few Flaws..........2006-03-26

This is the first book I read by Beth Kendrick and I will say that I was captured by the first chapter. I am not a big fan of first person narratives, but Gwen was laugh out loud funny and her inner dialogues and observations of the things around her were terrific. Alex was also a great character - handsome and sure of himself but not full of himself.

The book is a series of coincidences (and in a few places, contrivances) that lead Alex and Gwen from a promising beginning of a wonderful relationship to a look but don't touch "friendship," back to being together again. How they complete this circle is the meat of the book, but sometimes that meat is just a tad undercooked. There are a number of good secondary characters (Cesca is a riot, but there were a few moments where she got to be annoying - preaching to Gwen about one thing then doing the polar opposite in her own life). Alex was a little too hung up on his life as the child of a single parent so his decision to live with his ex, even though he really didn't want to be with her, was a tad hard to swallow considering he was usually a pretty smart and together guy.

However, despite these and a couple of other flaws, this book was a pretty decent read. I've noticed that Beth Kendrick chooses to let her readers fill in the details of the love scenes between the characters rather than actually describe the act, and I found that to be a bit of a letdown. There are ways to describe a love scene without getting too graphic - Nora Roberts does it all the time. Still, the book was fast, funny, and fun. I'm glad I read this before I read Kendrick's first book, "My Favorite Mistake." I found myself skipping through much of that book to get to the end. Had I read that one first, I would have missed this one and that would have been a shame since "Exes and Ohs" was definitely the better of the two.

Strong start, very iffy finish.......2006-01-31

You know, I bought this book because I read the first 5 or 10 pages and couldn't stop reading. Kendrick's voice is unique, hilarious, totally refreshing. And for chapters 1 - 9, I was hooked.

Then, chapter 10 just ruined everything for me. The heroine of the story is a psychologist--and yet, she gets mixed up in this totally codependent relationship with the hero, one in which she's constantly racing off to track him down and "save" him and his 4-year-old son (from "disasters" like overflowing bath water, temper tantrums, etc.). And this while she and the hero have already broken up, and he's living with his son's mother! No real psychologist would act like such a doormat, and if they did, there would be at least some acknowledgement of the irony. There should've been a line somewhere about how psychologists are often the most screwed-up people of anyone. But no.

After chapter 10, the disappointments kept coming. The heroine's best friend, also supposedly a psychologist, marries a guy after 12 hours of knowing him, and claims it was "love at first sight"--also something no psychologist would ever do. And the end of the book with the "madcap" trip to Vegas (to save her best friend...hmm, sensing a little savior complex on the part of the heroine, which NEVER gets addressed or resolved), the out-of-the-blue attempt at reconciliation from the heroine's ex-fiance, etc. etc., felt way rushed and basically just pulled out of a hat. Very disappointing, since the first half of the book was so fresh, funny and utterly believable. I hope Kendrick's other books are more believable all the way through.

IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW
Average customer rating:

believable fantasy

It's Magically Delicious!

A book of make believe, imaginative, tender and warm.

gives chick-lit a bad name!

Wonderful!!!
IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW
Cecelia Ahern
Manufacturer: Hyperion
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 140130866X

Book Description

Now in paperback: In this charming novel, internationally bestselling author Cecelia Ahern shows that sometimes not seeing is believing!

Readers and critics alike adore Cecelia Ahern for her lighthearted yet insightful stories about modern women and their often unusual situations. In If You Could See Me Now, she takes that theme a step further, offering us a heroine who is entirely believable, and the new man in her life who is, well, slightly less so.

Elizabeth Egan's life runs on order: Both her home and her emotions are arranged just so, with little room for spontaneity. It's how she counteracts the chaos of her family -- an alcoholic mother who left when she was young, an emotionally distant father, and a free-spirited sister, who seems to be following in their mother's footsteps, leaving her own six-yearold son, Luke, in Elizabeth's care. When Ivan, Luke's mysterious new grown-up friend, enters the picture, Elizabeth doesn't know quite what to make of him. With his penchant for adventure and colorful take on things large and small, Ivan opens Elizabeth's eyes to a whole new way of living. But is it for real? Is Ivan for real?

If You Could See Me Now is a love story with heart -- and just a touch of magic.

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Elizabeth's life is an organized mess. The organized part is all due to Elizabeth's efforts. The mess is all due to her sister, Saoirse (pronounced Seer-sha), whose personal problems challenge Elizabeth's orderly world and leave her scrambling to pick up the pieces that Saoirse's whirlwind leaves behind. One of these pieces is Saoirse's son, Luke. Age 6, Luke is a quiet, contemplative boy whose all-too serious aunt cares for him well, and whose all-too unstable mother is a red headed blur. When Luke is playing on the front lawn of Elizabeth's home one day, witnessing the latest scene between his aunt and his mother, a friend walks into his life. A friend named Ivan. And this unexpected friend, whose origins are mysterious, will change the boy and his aunt in wonderful ways that neither of them could ever have expected. With all the warmth and wit that fans have come to expect from Cecelia Ahern, IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW is a novel full of magic, heart, and surprising romance.

Customer Reviews:

believable fantasy.......2007-08-18

what should have been an ridiculous plot and premise turned out to be a heartwarming story about hope and believing what we cannot see. It was absolutely wonderful.

It's Magically Delicious!.......2007-06-27

Elizabeth Egan never got the chance to be a child. Abandoned by her gypsy alcoholic mother as a young girl, she was forced to raise her younger sister and cater to her bitter, resentful father. At the age of 35, not much has changed, except that now she has adopted her sister's son, Luke, and she is all business as an interior decorator. She has no time to laugh or take the lesser problems of life with a grain of salt. That is, she doesn't until Ivan comes into her life.

Ivan is a "best friend" who usually helps young children in trouble and, at first, only Luke can see him. Then it's Elizabeth who sees him. That's when things get complicated, because, amid all the life-changing fun of discovering the childhood she didn't get to have with Ivan and Luke, Elizabeth and Ivan begin to fall in love. There are just a few problems, though: Nobody else can see Ivan, although he is truly there, and he can never grow old like a mortal being.

So what is to become of them? Well, get If You Could See Me Now and find out for yourself. I laughed a lot, cried a few times, and was totally enchanted by the childlike magic aimed at all ages in Ahern's sweet story. Here is a charming book that deserves to be made into a blockbuster family movie. It might even make you believe there's something more than air to your childrens' imaginary playmates.

A book of make believe, imaginative, tender and warm........2007-05-28

Ahern tempers heartbreak with hope and playfulness in this uplifting, sentimental tale.
34-year-old Elizabeth Egan is an uptight interior designer with a 23-year-old sister Saoirse who prefers drinking and getting arrested to parenting and an adoptive son Luke (Saoirse's son). Her alcoholic mother abandoned them and left them with their emotionally distant father to fend for themselves. Elizabeth learns to adhere to an obsessive compulsive existence to survive and protect herself from the pain of loving and being disappointed... she prefers to have no mess, no conflicts, and thus, no love. However, all that changes with the arrival of Ivan, a funny and spontaneous guy intent on infusing happiness and tenderness into Elizabeth's frigid self. The catch is that no one can see this ageless guy from the land of "Ekam Eveileb" (Make Believe) except Elizabeth and her nephew. Being with Ivan makes Elizabeth turn into the woman she's always been too afraid to be. He helps her live the childhood she never had and forgive those who have let her down. An inspiring tale of love and friendship.

gives chick-lit a bad name!.......2007-03-30

As an Irish woman living in the US I eagerly await new Irish authors and love to read novels set in my home country. This book is utter tripe! The concept is completely unbelievable, the characters are one dimensional; ohmigod a commitment-phobe, routine driven, unlucky in love career-woman heroine? I kept reading and waiting for it to get better, but it never did. Ahearne's first novel PS I Love You was pretty good, however, unlikely it would have been published if Cecilia's daddy wasn't Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland. It helps to have friends, not to mention relatives in high places, all that free publicity! Save your money and buy Marian Keyes, as the guys in the Guinness ads say, she's brilliant! I give it one star as it's not possible to give none.

Wonderful!!!.......2007-03-21

I LOVED this book!!! When I started reading, it reminded me a lot of the movie "Drop Dead Fred" but quickly I became intrigued by the characters! I read this book in 5 hours and hated putting it down for even a second! I recommend this book to anyone with a vivid imagination or anyone lacking the spirit of Make Believe. This book will just make you happy! I smiled while I read! :)

Average customer rating:

Not what it appears to be
An Unusual Opportunity to read a novel and the source thereof...
"I know this may come as a shock, but I have reason to believe you're my biological father."
terrific memoir
Memoir that reads like mystery

If You Could See Me Now
Michael Mewshaw
Manufacturer: Unbridled Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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Adoption | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1932961208

Book Description

When Michael Mewshaw receives a call from a stranger who says she has reason

to believe he is her biological father, Mewshaw realizes he has been half dreading,

half hoping for this to happen for over thirty years. Just like the young woman

who wants to find the last piece to the puzzle of her life, he thinks it's possible that

in the same process he will discover the answers to questions that have plagued

him for decades. But first he has to make sure she is who she claims to be.

In this fascinating memoir, Mewshaw confronts his own past, the chaos of his

family, and complicated memories of the woman he once loved who went on to

success as an ambassador, Undersecretary of State, and a member of one of

America's most influential families. His unusual role in the baby's birth, her adoption,

and, now, her search for her biological parents sets the stage for a revealing

personal odyssey that offers a quest for identity and a journey of discovery, an

obsession with recapturing the past and righting old wrongs, and the constant

potential for disappointment balanced against the possibility of redemption.

Along the way, by rediscovering who he was and who he has become, he finds

his own life enriched.

Customer Reviews:

Not what it appears to be.......2007-08-02

This tale is so manipulated that it is annoying. I could tell by the tortured language that the author had some hook; when he reveals it in chapter 2 a rereading of chapter 1 reveals actual dishonesty. By the end of the book, I disliked the author.

The memoir itself is interesting; the way he chose to present it is just wrong. He wrote this book at the expense of the other people involved.

An Unusual Opportunity to read a novel and the source thereof..........2006-05-27

Having read Michael Mewshaw's novel - Waking Slow - in the year of its publication, 1972 and remembering it as one of the saddest tales of hopeless 'love' that I had encountered at the time, well...

It wasn't until a hatchet-job 'review' in a very recent Los Angeles Times, revealed to me that Mewshaw had chronicled the events of the novel, in a new non-fiction memoir: If You Could See Me Now.

So I reread Waking Slow, after lo, these 34 years. Then I read the non-fictional version.

Mewshaw has of necessity, excised the surplus situations/characters in his novel and cut to just the primary ones: 'Adrienne' and himself.

The story about them has been well-discussed by other reviewers here.

The amazing thing is that after so many years have passed for these two since the birth of 'Amy',and the relative professional and familial successes of both, the pain of Mewshaw's protagonist, Carter, is still very much evident in his creator.

It still hurts!

"I know this may come as a shock, but I have reason to believe you're my biological father.".......2006-04-10

In this compelling non-fiction story of adoption and its aftermath, author Michael Mewshaw relives the phone call that begins this book about searches--not just the search of a young woman wanting answers about her parentage, but also the search for answers by Mewshaw and several other people intimately involved in her adoption. Most of the story cannot be summarized here without spoiling the suspense for the reader, but it does not reveal too much to say that Mewshaw knows that he is not "Amy's" father. He has been involved in the circumstances leading to her adoption, however, having been deeply in love with Amy's birth mother.

In the thirty years that have elapsed since then, Mewshaw has frequently thought about "Adrienne Daly," the name he gives Amy's mother here, a high-profile beauty involved in Republican politics, a woman who has been an Undersecretary of State and an ambassador. Mewshaw, who has written ten novels, has often used Adrienne as a model for his female characters, and though he is happily married with a family of his own, he has always wondered what would have happened with Adrienne if....

As Mewshaw digs into the past and tries to help Amy by reconnecting with Adrienne, the reader sees the complexity of the adoption issue, not from the point of view of the adoptee, but from that of the then-young people who chose adoption as the best option for the baby, along with the lasting effects on their lives from that decision, their second thoughts, their memories, their new starts.

Mewshaw's success as an author holds him in good stead as he writes his personal story. His writing is fast-paced, the suspense builds effectively, and the dialogue is natural and realistic. Dividing the novel into three parts, Mewshaw first recreates Amy's initial contact with him, her contact with the agency which handled her adoption, and the support of her adoptive mother. In successive sections, he reveals his own childhood, his college years, and his relationship with Adrienne; and finally, in the present, he focuses on his developing relationship with Amy, his reconnection with Adrienne, and on the changes wrought by their choices.

Thoughtfully written, without hearts-and-flowers sentimentality, this book addresses the adoption issue from a broader perspective than that of the adoptee and the birth parents--other people are always involved, too. As Mewshaw shows each person considering this complex issue and making an irrevocable decision at a very young age, he also connects the past with the present, showing each person revisiting that decision thirty years later. In this he performs a service which many adoptive parents and adoptees will find enlightening. n Mary Whipple

terrific memoir .......2006-04-04

The saga began for Michael Mewshaw with a call from his half-sister Karen in Maryland while he was dining with his wife and their son. Karen informs him that Amy from California asked her if she is her biological mother. Michael calls Amy who asks him if he might be her biological father as she insists she does not need a parent having been raised by loving one, but she wants her medical history because she will soon marry and have children one day.

Michael knows the saga truly began in 1964 with his college girlfriend Adrienne Daly, but before providing any response to Amy, he investigates the veracity of what she claims. It has been three decades since he last spoke with the now top Republican official Adrienne, Michael decides to help Amy though he is not related to her in any way.

This terrific memoir will grip from the onset when Karen calls her sibling and never lets readers go even after we finish, as Michael tries to help Amy, but in doing so looks deep inside himself. Michael Mewshaw bears open the core of his essence in this powerful look at who a person is, as he ponders whether someone is a product of the environment, the DNA, or some hybrid. Nonfiction readers will want to peruse this powerful soul searcher.

Harriet Klausner

Memoir that reads like mystery.......2006-03-15

One afternoon in the mid-1990's author Michael Mewshaw got a call he'd been half expecting for some thirty years: a woman in America--Mewshaw was living in London--had reason to believe that he was her biological father. The woman, Amy, was almost right: Mewshaw's name was in fact on Amy's birth certificate, and he'd been involved with her mother at the time of Amy's birth, while he was in college at the University of Maryland. But Mewshaw hadn't fathered the baby whose adoption he wound up being instrumental in arranging. Mewshaw's role in Amy's early life nevertheless left him feeling almost paternal toward her, and he wanted to help Amy reconnect with her birth mother.

In his memoir If You Could See Me Now Mewshaw chronicles his involvement in Amy's search for her biological parents, but his story is far from a straightforward account of his attempts to track down an old girlfriend. Amy's quest is rather the peg on which Mewshaw hangs an account of his life, or that part of it that bears on his relationship with Amy's mother. While detailing his efforts on Amy's behalf, Mewshaw writes about his fractured identity as a child, the result of his parents' divorce and his strained relationship with both father and father figure, and about his complicated history with the woman he calls "Adrienne Daly," his college sweetheart. Mewshaw's unpacking of that relationship, his attempts to uncover the truth behind Adrienne's pregnancy and behavior decades after the fact, make for a surprisingly compelling story that at times reads like a mystery.

Mewshaw does not identify Amy's mother by her real name in the book: as a public figure she would not welcome exposure as a former unwed mother. But he does provide a great many details about Adrienne that will send readers running to Google, most tantalizing among them that Amy's mother served as Undersecretary of State during the Reagan and Bush administrations. One wonders whether these same revelations won't send Adrienne running to her lawyers, as she will surely not be pleased with her presentation in the book. Adrienne is the clear villain of the piece, painted by Mewshaw as a calculating and disingenuous user of men, a woman lacking in maternal warmth, who valued--who continues to value--her own convenience over the life of her daughter. One can't help disliking her, even while bearing in mind that Mewshaw's account is necessarily a one-sided affair, and while wondering why he chose to reveal as much about Adrienne's real identity as he did. Is the book a form of retribution? If so, does that alter our response to it?

Though slow in its final chapter, If You Could See Me Now is an otherwise quick read. Tantalizing because of its near exposure of the misdeeds of the nearly famous, Mewshaw's book is interesting also as an example of how the small dramas of one's life, considered in hindsight, can make for good reading.

Debra Hamel -- author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in ancient Greece (Yale University Press, 2003)

Average customer rating:

An Ice-Cold Head Trip From My Past
MILES TO GO
Straub hits one out of the park....
"If You Forget, God Help You..."
Thanks a lot, jerk !

If You Could See Me Now
Peter Straub
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0345438671
Release Date: 2000-07-05

Book Description

One summer night, a boy and his beautiful cousin plunge naked into the moonlit waters of a rural quarry. Twenty years later, the boy, now grown, flees the wreckage of his life and returns to Arden, Wisconsin, in search of everything he has lost.

But for Miles Teagarden, the landscape he had known so well has turned eerie and threatening. And the love he shared has become very, very deadly . . .

Customer Reviews:

An Ice-Cold Head Trip From My Past.......2005-08-18

There are books you read and forget as soon as you're done with them, and there are books you never forget. Rarer still are the books that haunt you for a lifetime. If You Could See Me Now is, for me, one such book.

I was first given a copy of this short, rapid-paced genre novel in high school by a friend who has since passed away. He was heading back up to college at the time and putting some of his books in storage for the year and when he came across this one, he said to me, "Read this, Ellie, but don't let it screw with your mind." I thought he was kidding around; a book screw with MY mind? Ha, as if, right? But, no, this book is dark. And it got to me in a way many others simply could not have done. The tragedies at its core, loss and the effect of that loss on the central character, represent probably the deepest of the negative themes out there in literature, as well as in life. In this book, Mr. Straub does a great job of holding down a sense of mystery-via-confusion and we alternate between wondering about the odd events in the present of the novel (set in rural Wisconsin in the summer of 1975) and the abrupt end to the more straightforward description (set in the same place in 1955) at the start of the work. Some have said they saw the revelation coming at about the 2/3 point of the novel but I didn't and I remember I stopped in mid-sentence and felt stunned. And sad. Very sad. I recall thinking: I didn't want it to be that way...

See, okay, granted this wavering novel of unequal merit is a genre story penned by a man most known for his ghost stories, but until it makes up its mind what direction it wants to go, this works as an extremely engrossing study of the behavior of an inexplicably neurotic and haunted main character. The characterizations,and the emotions these characters feel, are as realistically cast as those of any men and women from "serious" literature.

This book holds meaning to me for the personal history I touched-on at the start of this review, but it is also a book with a story that deserves more readers than it's had, being overshadowed as it is by some of Straub's later, more well-received works, such as Ghost Story and his collaborations with Stephen King. I gave it four stars instead of five for several reasons, the most glaring of which is the annoying ending Straub imposes after the contortions of plot that kept me rapt through the first two-thirds of the story. Trailing after the gloomy depression this psycholgical study left in me when I read it a dozen years ago, was a feeling of accute frustration that this novel I cared about was ended in the way it was. I was ticked off and I'm guessing you will be, too. Still, my advice, if you want to spend a week reading a dark tale of obsessive youthful love gone very wrong, read this. With apologies to Peter Straub, forget the superficial elements of horror that come late in this psychological mystery and concentrate on the first 200 pages. This book works as a carefuly unfolded story of love, loss, and grief. If he had left it as that in its final third, If You Could See Me Now would go down as his masterpiece instead of a mild letdown.

MILES TO GO.......2003-02-08

Miles Teagarden, the narrator and focal character, in Straub's early "If You Could See Me Now" is one mixed up guy. At times, you have to wonder if he's got all his cookies; but in some ways, that's what makes this book an eerie, if not classic, thriller. Straub is a wonderful writer, and even though at times, he gets too wordy, he sets a very suspenseful mood, and keeps an impending sense of doom permeating the novel.
When Miles returns to the scene of a horrifying "accident" after twenty years, we wonder when and if his beloved Allison will keep the vow she made those many years ago. If you've read a lot of this type of book, you pretty much know what the big revelation will be halfway through the book. Once you find that out, the story loses a little of its punch and the rest of the time, Miles is involved in finding out whodunit, although it's pretty obvious who did! At any rate, the novel moves along rather nicely, but the ending seems somewhat rushed, and the murderer's identity is something that is obscure and not fully fleshed out. Overall, though, if you are a Straub fan, this book fits nicely in your library, although "Ghost Story" and "Floating Dragon" are his best works.
RECOMMENDED.

Straub hits one out of the park...........2002-08-27

This is a great story that Straub tells very well and in a rare book, does not "over-write" or become overly wordy, the only fault I can find with Straub's writing.

Straub is a master craftsman and a very good storyteller, but like I said his books sometimes get "wordy". However, here he has not encountered that and writes a great "short novel" about going home and dredging up the past.

This is an easy read and flows smoothly, however Miles is just clueless. He gets in all types of trouble and seems to have no common sense at all. He is not one of Straub's more memorable characters.

Still, two thumbs way way up!!!

"If You Forget, God Help You...".......2002-05-23

Thirteen year old Miles Teagarden and his one year older racy cousin, Alison Greening, went skinny-dipping in the quarry in Arden, Wisconsin, and made a pact to reunite twenty years in the future. Only Miles left the quarry alive. He doesn't remember what happened, but Alison drowned and everyone blamed him for it - though, hypocritical prudes that the townsfolk were, they felt the girl had it coming.

Now, twenty years later, Miles has returned to honor the pact. With his return comes a shocking wave of serial murders and abductions - all of young girls of Alison's age and appearance. Suspicion falls upon him, and Miles has a knack for making it all worse. He's ruffling a lot of feathers, figuring out what really happened to Alison all those years ago. And before long, he's got much bigger worries than being the prime suspect in the most horrific crimes Arden has ever seen - because it seems someone is trying to kill him...

This is a flawed novel, but it's a great flawed novel. Written between his debut book, Julia, and his most popular work, Ghost Story, Straub's If You Could See Me Now is a bridge between his supernatural horror fiction and his later Blue Rose murder mystery trilogy. The suspense in this book is superior, never letting up and continually adding new surprises in plot development.

The book is thematically rich, and could easily become the subject of any number of contemporary literature research papers. It is mostly a murder mystery, and a well-written one at that. The supernatural element in the story is ill-explained and seems somewhat inconsistent, yet it works. Alison's motivations are not understandable, though in large part Straub seems to have intended her character to be enigmatic - her name, and her method of manifestation, suggest a change in her akin to becoming some sort of perverse nature elemental.

If you like suspense - supernatural, or more mundane crime melodrama - this is the book for you.

Thanks a lot, jerk !.......2001-12-29

I'd like to thank the reader from Los Angeles who completely spoiled this book for me and anyone else who hasn't read it. I was checking to see if this book was good or not, and right away there's some butthead giving away the book's major surprise. Here's a tip, "reader", try giving a spoiler warning before you do something like that again. To do this you can type SPOILERS in capital letters, just like that. It's the courteous thing to do. Also, you probably don't know this, but it's not very nice to tell your friends the ending of a movie that you saw before they did. Kinda spoils the experience.

Average customer rating:

If You Could See Me Now
Cecelia Ahern
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000TQ4UTW

Average customer rating:

If You Could See Me Now
Cecelia Ahern; Readers Susan Lynch and Ruper
Manufacturer: HYPERION AUDIO
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD
ASIN: B000WTNYMK

Average customer rating:

If You Could See Me Now
Ceclia Ahern
Manufacturer: HYPERION
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OJX0YA

Average customer rating:

IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW
Peter Straub
Manufacturer: Coward McCann
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OP6A14

Average customer rating:

If You Could See Me Now
Peter Straub
Manufacturer: Pocket
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000GRBP24

Average customer rating:

If You Could See Me Now
Peter Straub
Manufacturer: Pocket Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NU4TMC

Average customer rating:

If You Could See Me Now

ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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