Vanished by Karen Robards
|
List Price: Our Price: $1.43 You Save: $6.56 (82%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Vanished
Book Review: Great sexual tension, annoying ending.
Summary: 4 Stars
This book started out great. My palms were sweating by the second or third page. I got swept up in the mystery and the romance between Sarah and Jake. My only problem was the ending. Not only was it far-fetched, but it felt like the author was going for the tear-jerker ending scene. But if you like Robards and you like steamy love scenes, give it a try.Book Review: Any chance of reading another Karen Robards book has 'Vanished'!
Summary: 2 Stars
I thought this book had an interesting premise, and it was easy to feel sympathy toward the main character, which is something I couldn't say about most of the books I've reviewed in the last few months. Jake and Sarah could have made an interesting couple, but the story, and charaters, deteriorated about a quarter of the way through the book.
There were a lot of examples of stilted, cloying dialogue(especially Sarah freaking out that a colleague will suspect she and Jake were 'intimate', because they both had their shoes off, and there were pizza boxes on the living room table...maybe the colleague would have just assumed he was in a frat house!).
The repetition of 'Lexie, Lexie! IT WAS LEXIE!'started off as a believable way of indicating Sarah's shocked and disturbed state of mind, but Robards trivialized it by using it dozens of times in the space of a few pages. The more things reminded Sarah of Lexie, the harder it was to stay focused on the story. Robards tried to tie everything together, but she was really reaching by the final chapters. Characters spent a lot of time stating the obvious(an observation that people signed in to an internet chat room could be 'anywhere'...this isn't 1996 any more, the internet has been around a while, and most adults don't consider it to be 'magic' the way some of those cops did!)
The development of Sarah and Jake's platonic friendship into an all-out romance stopped being interesting somewhere through that excruciatingly long lovemaking session, in which Robards simply filled about 10 pages with variations on 'They had sex'.
The attempt to make far-fetched and unbelievable plot points into a 'surprise' finish dragged the story down even further...but the final few pages were unbelievably cheap. (SPOILER)
Guess who shows up? Guess whose name is only mentioned about 5000 times?
If you're stumped by difficult questions like that, you'll love 'Vanished'!
Book Review: ah...Jake
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a fairly well written book there were some typos and the law wasn't always right but the charactors were well developed. I tend to agree with some of the other reviewers who said that Sarah was whiny and anorexic...she truely is, but for me Jake and his associates made up for her flaws.
This is the second Karen Robards book I have read and just like the first this one was tied in a pretty bow at the end, and again the bad guys were obscure charactors to the story. Vanished also has the bane of many novels, with a very warm and fuzzy ending. The last couple of pages should have been reconnecting with life accepting grief seeing in color again, going on vacation for goodness sake! Something, anything... other than what it was.
Book Review: Phrases are Repetitive, Main Character Was Dingy, Ending is Simplistic and Quick
Summary: 2 Stars
I've liked many of this author's previous books; they have humor, fresh dialogue, action, and well-explained endings. "Vanished" however, drags in the scenes in between the action sequences. There are phrases that repeat many times ("This was Jake.", or "The thing about Jake [or other people/objects] was . . . ") The ending was blunt, with many threads linking the evildoer to the rest of the plot left untied. Most annoying was Sarah Mason's repeated ventures, alone, in the dark (of course), despite already having been attacked, having her house invaded/vandalized several times, receiving creepy phone calls, a freaky message on her car window, and being warned a lot about not going around by herself -- ARGH!Book Review: The Ending Should Vanish
Summary: 2 Stars
I have rarely been inspired to read reviews of a book after I read it, but the ending of this book is so hideously bad that I just had to come look and see if others felt the same way. I actually rather enjoyed everything up until the end, it was a bit wordy at times but I did enjoy the story. It just seems like there were so many things that didn't need to be in there that were and then you get to the end of the book and she rushes right through it. It cheapens what happened to her daughter, as though it's not a big deal to have that happen to you. I think it's sad not only in the fictional sense but also for those children or parents who have had this happen in real life. No child goes through that and just comes home and life just goes back to normal. I agree that if she was going to end the story on such a quick note like this it would have been better to have not found Lexie or to have not had Lexie survive.