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Marcie's Reviews > The Great Escape
The Great Escape (Wynette, Texas, #7)
by Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Goodreads Author)
by Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Goodreads Author)
The only problem with this book is: its author cannot top what she’s already written. SEP has written some of the best romance elements the genre has ever seen, that will go down in history.
Remember the opening scene of “Natural Born Charmer”? The cool pro football player zooming down the Texas open road in his black Porsche when he suddenly sees a life-sized, headless beaver stomping along the side of the road (our heroine, obviously having a bad day). Or the dialogue in “Nobody’s Baby” between the heroine, a female physicist, and the hero, “dumb” football player. It still makes me smile to remember those two and her booby-trapping his mansion using nothing but kitchen utensils. What about the one that used funny, antiquated quotes from period romances to introduce her contemporary chapters? Hilarious. SEP always has side characters that deal with various social issues, but the one with the widowed mom was one of the hottest sex scenes I’ve ever read, during which the town tycoon coaxes her feet out of the grave, and she is brought back to life. Superbly done. I remember one heroine bringing an amusement park back to life, a huge metaphor, and in particular a roller coaster for abused girls, a metaphor for facing fears…so we have a metaphor inside another metaphor. And the one about the First Lady who disguises herself as a pregnant, unwed skank-girl and travels the country in a Winnebago nicknamed Mabel?
SEP has written the best romances in our recent time. (One could argue Rosemary Rogers and Kathleen Woodiwiss started it all for the Modern Romance in the 70s, then passed the baton to Lindsey, Gabaldon, Dailey, Roberts, Garwood, McNaught, Spencer, Brown. But, no one shined brighter than SEP in the late 1990s/ 2000s.)
This book was a rehash, unfortunately, containing many story elements of previous books. Someone new to SEP might think it was cute, but I expect great from the greatest contemporary romance novelist.
Where do we go from here? Fifty Shades of Gray? That makes me sad. Where’s the humanity, the humor? The deft skill? The intelligence? I did not laugh out loud or sob pathetically at the end of this, but I’ll never give up on SEP.
Remember the opening scene of “Natural Born Charmer”? The cool pro football player zooming down the Texas open road in his black Porsche when he suddenly sees a life-sized, headless beaver stomping along the side of the road (our heroine, obviously having a bad day). Or the dialogue in “Nobody’s Baby” between the heroine, a female physicist, and the hero, “dumb” football player. It still makes me smile to remember those two and her booby-trapping his mansion using nothing but kitchen utensils. What about the one that used funny, antiquated quotes from period romances to introduce her contemporary chapters? Hilarious. SEP always has side characters that deal with various social issues, but the one with the widowed mom was one of the hottest sex scenes I’ve ever read, during which the town tycoon coaxes her feet out of the grave, and she is brought back to life. Superbly done. I remember one heroine bringing an amusement park back to life, a huge metaphor, and in particular a roller coaster for abused girls, a metaphor for facing fears…so we have a metaphor inside another metaphor. And the one about the First Lady who disguises herself as a pregnant, unwed skank-girl and travels the country in a Winnebago nicknamed Mabel?
SEP has written the best romances in our recent time. (One could argue Rosemary Rogers and Kathleen Woodiwiss started it all for the Modern Romance in the 70s, then passed the baton to Lindsey, Gabaldon, Dailey, Roberts, Garwood, McNaught, Spencer, Brown. But, no one shined brighter than SEP in the late 1990s/ 2000s.)
This book was a rehash, unfortunately, containing many story elements of previous books. Someone new to SEP might think it was cute, but I expect great from the greatest contemporary romance novelist.
Where do we go from here? Fifty Shades of Gray? That makes me sad. Where’s the humanity, the humor? The deft skill? The intelligence? I did not laugh out loud or sob pathetically at the end of this, but I’ll never give up on SEP.
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