A Lost Soul Drifting through Life, Being Whatever Her Controller Wanted Her To Be

3.0 out of 5 stars

By Sherrie Miranda

This review is for: Do With Me What You Will (Hardcover)

Although JCO is one of my favorite authors, this book took me, literally, years to finish. As a couple reviewers said, it is the story of Elena Howe coming to an understanding of who she is. But Elena HOWE comes later in the novel. If my memory serves me correctly, Elena is kidnapped by her father and kept like his secret treasure. Years later, she gets away from him, only to have her mother tell her what to do and how to be.

That is how she becomes Mrs. Howe. In the middle of the novel, Elena is nowhere to be seen. How does a novel have pages of writing (and I’m talking about approx. 100 pages) without the protagonists? I must admit I skipped through some of these pages only to find out later that we were getting to know Elena’s future lover, the man who, at the end she leaves her husband for. But does she actually find him? Not according to what I read.

So, I found the book very hard to follow and I set it down several times for that reason. We spent most of our time in Elena’s head and Elena had no idea what she thought or who she was. She was basically a lost soul who, according to a couple reviewers, finally figured out who she was at the end. I am not convinced of that.