"Not such a dead hero - not such an exciting story"
Working her way up through the restaurant business Rose
Pisano has the dream of opening her own restaurant one day.
She saves every penny she can from the cooking job she
currently has but it will still take years before she has
the money to make this dream happen. When she sees a job
offer in the paper for a personal chef with the outlandish
pay of $80 thousand a year, she has to apply even though
she has never taken a cooking class in her life. Everything
she knows, she learned from her Italian grandmother. Having faked his own death, mega music star Declan McDonald
has spent the last two years shut off from the world. His
only "contact" with the outside world is his mother, the
songs he anonymously composes for terminally ill children
and getting frozen dinners delivered from the grocery
store. One look at Rose and he knows he is headed for
trouble, but hires her anyway because she is the only
applicant that didn't run away before the actual interview. Jane Blackwood has a very interesting story idea, and Rose
does have a very humorous personality. Each chapter begins
with a food item such as one would find on a menu, and some
of them sounded pretty good. However, I have very mixed
emotions on this book. I actually think that the story itself is too long even
with everything that is happening. The book introduces our
couple, then they toy with each other, Rose in the
kitchen... it dragged on. When Declan's cover is discovered
and the media is all over him the pace of the story picks
back up, but I didn't think it would be possible but the
story actually started to drag again for me. Even though Rose has decided she is in love with Declan,
there is very little interaction between the two in person.
I think this is my primary complaint with the story: for a
romance, there is too much happening that doesn't involve
Rose and Declan as a couple. To tell you the truth, I
stopped reading this book and am not sure why I picked it
back up to reread and finish. Declan was unable to handle his celebrity status and in all
actuality, I did not like him as a hero. He and Rose don't
actually have a dating relationship, but they do have a
consenting sexual relationship. As a person, he is a
contradiction: to many things in a hero I don't like and
yet he has this soft side that to me clashed with his
personality and the person he presented to the media. It is
his love of music that has him composing songs, and it is
one song written for a prominent political figureheads
dying daughter that brings about his discovery. Unlike Declan, Rose shines in the media. She uses every bit
of the celebrity status she has received to promote her
restaurant because she now has the ability to open and if
she plays all her cards correctly, succeed. She has a great
personality and I really like the fact that she was willing
to let Declan go even though it was breaking her heart. So
she had the drive to also make her dream a reality. So as I said, THE SEXIEST DEAD MAN ALIVE is an interesting
idea. I'm not sure its worth buying, but it was a good book
to read right before going to bed. Reviewed by Cynthia Eckert
\
Posted June 4, 2006
Reviewed by Cynthia Eckert
Posted November 22, 2006
|
