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...a 2400 year old work of philosophy? The question, itself, is not without philosophic interest.

Rather than presume to judge Plato, or Socrates, or Plato-as-Socrates, I will simply add my own voice to the chorus of general opinion and say: TLDoS is as resonant and, in its way, relevant, today as it was so many aeons ago. Though hardly a work of unassailable logic it is, nonetheless, a deeply thoughtful, imaginative, and passionately argued one. As I made my way through it, I had to remind myself, from time to time, that what I had before me was a work of ancient literature. Tredennick and Tarrant are to be commended for their eminently readable translation. As I am not a classicist, I cannot speak to the quality of the translation, but if the quality of the endnotes serves as any indication, I would venture to guess that the translation is first-rate.

A very complex Socrates -- as remembered, as imagined, and perhaps also as invented -- emerges from the four dialogues in TSDoS. That this same Socrates still has power to reach across the ages to confound, inspire, frustrate, entertain, and teach is as sure a testament to his legacy, and to the legacy of classical Greek philosophy, as any.

Read and learn.

In Athens, during the fifth century B.C., the Sophists were wise men. They were not philosophers, or scientists, they were itinerant teachers. Socrates was a moralist and a religious man. Plato was forty years younger than Socrates. THE APOLOGY and the CRITO are founded on fact, shaped by Plato's artistry, (he was a poet, also).

Socrates was indicted for impiety. A public action was brought against him as a menace to society. Orators and poets disliked Socrates's influence on the young. He asserted in THE APOLOGY that the true champion of justice must confine himself to private life. Socrates received the death penalty. He did not think he should stoop to servility because he was in danger.

Death is either annihilation or migration of the soul. Crito visited Socrates in prison. Crito urged him to escape. He claimed that Socrates was throwing away his life when he might save it. Socrates argued with Crito that he had no problem with the laws and, thus, he had a duty to be law-biding. Aiding Socrates's escape would be a breach of faith.

PHAEDO is the last conversation. Socrates believed a man should be cheerful in the face of death. A love of wisdom, not the body, makes a person cheerful. Soul resembles the divine, body resembles what is mortal. No soul which has not practiced philosophy may attain the divine nature. Pythagoreans have a theory of the soul. The soul is imperishable. Friends were admonished by Socrates to just be themselves. The philosopher faced death handily.

Amazing and wonderful, the three titles are a compelling work.

THE DEATH OF SOCRATES is a very inspiring book to read, especially now, when many of us may be facing the same situation he faced--though with a crucial difference. Whatever distortion of the real Socrates may have been introduced by Plato or other writers, enough comes through to paint a portrait of the first true individual in history-- the first person to be guided by his own individual conscience to do what is right, regardless of the consequences. Reading the Apology, one thrills to Socrates intransigence in the face of the Athenian jury which sentenced him to death. CRITO presents the best argument for government under law ever offered, and thus the beginning of the tradition of civil disobedience later taken up by Thoreau, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. When Socrates' friend Crito urges him to flee, saying that most people will think he was really guilty if he does not, Socrates says, "Why should we pay so much attention to what most people think?" Then he engages in a symbolic dialogue with the Law of Athens, which can be thought of as comparable to the US Constitution. It is clear that he is grateful to the Laws for having given him the opportunity to be a dissenter. The crucial fact is that they have permitted him the right to attempt to persuade his fellow citizens by permitting him free speech. Even when he was arrested for his teachings, he was allowed to speak in his own defense. Although the verdict was unjust, he was a victim not of the Laws but of his fellow men. (p. 95)

However, the tradition of civil disobedience which Socrates founded is only meaningful in a democracy, where people have the right to dissent and to have a fair and public trial. And it is rapidly becoming obsolete. For on October 17, 2006, President Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act, initiating the gravest crisis in US history, not excepting the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11 itself. Congress has had over a year to repeal or amend that act but has failed to do so. Now it is up for review by the Supreme Court. If that body, now nearly half-filled with "rubber stamp" justices, fails to strike down the law as unconstitutional we shall have to resort to a very different tradition than that of Socrates, one which has its roots in medieval England, and was transformed in the 17th century into John Locke's social contract theory. Jefferson expressed it in the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence: speaking of the American colonists, he wrote, "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them to absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and provide new guards for their future security." Faced with the prospect of living in a society which would have made his dissenting individualism impossible, I'm sure Socrates would have agreed.

In this simply-organized compilation of Socratic Dialogues, I would offer that the way Penguin Classics presents them cannot be outdone. The playfully loquacious dialogues are pure-gold bricks of logic, and should therefore be cherished greatly. This book is easy to understand because there are endnotes on every page. Spanning the entirety of over 200 juicy pages, Harold Tarrant and Hugh Tredennick present The Last Days of Socrates to the reader in an easy to follow pattern of notes. These final works of Plato should not be thought of as poor entertainment, but rather highly intense and compelling Greek discussions. It is very well-done and should be read over and over again.



Although every Socratic dialogue is absolutely riddled with complacent people for Socrates to question, this collection actually reveals the largest variety of listeners. From crazy commoners to cynical and court-goers, a critical criminal and the crowd of conflicting friends, Socrates caught every category and class of character off guard. At first, the evidence that hints at Socrates' trial is a mere conviction and nothing more. He had been free then. He had boldly questioned commoners at the very steps to the courthouse that he would defend himself in later. This penniless philosopher inquired of many people during his spare time.



In this collection, the second and third dialogues are the ones that depict the powerful defense of Socrates using logic to its full extent. In brilliantly defending himself, Socrates caressed, persuaded, and rallied only just under half of the jury. Unfortunately, he had failed to win the jury over completely, but he had come so close. Sleeping in the cell that was later constructed for him, Socrates was aroused by Crito, a man who had been a believer in Socrates. The extent of the discussion is contained in the third dialogue titled Crito. Anyhow, the general public hated Socrates so much that only death would avenge their flaming lust for revenge. The second and third dialogues depict Socrates' infamous apologetics and must be read. That is not all, however.



In Phaedo, Socrates calmly awaited his own death by hemlock, in a full chamber of the courthouse. He first addressed his followers and comrades alike concerning the meaning of life. He wanted to reassure them that there was indeed life after death, and that he would be going to a better place. Before he drank the poison, however, Socrates spurred a discussion of the soul and its immortality, or at least as logic had presented it to him. (Of course he had to argue it.) When two of his followers timidly provided Socrates with their opposing views, he only smiled and destroyed each argument consecutively. This he did because he wanted to share his hopes with his friends and did not want them to doubt his reincarnation. Nobody could fight back tears as he took the poison and perished. Socrates' legend now carries from there on. In Phaedo, the philosopher convinced his pals that his soul had not been dying, but had rather been transcending.



I love how Penguin has organized these significant conversations. Socrates is much easier to comprehend because of this book. Socrates had been last heard saying, "Crito, we ought to offer a cock to Asclepius. (This is because Asclepius had been the god of pleasure.) See to it and don't forget." Buy this book. See to it and do not forget. When I purchased this book, which was in a used condition, it only cost two cents and has not disappointed me. Since it is known that Socrates is always welcome to thinkers, the price feels reduced even further for those who love logic. You will deprive yourself if you miss out on this intellectual classic of the Father of Greek philosophy.

Although many accounts of Socrates' trial are known to have existed for some time after the actual events described by Plato, only Plato's and Xenophon's accounts survive. Both writers were sympathetic to Socrates, and so are somewhat suspect as to whether they adequately and accurately describe the full nature of the charges against Socrates. Plato, a 27-year-old admirer of Socrates at the time of the trial, describes the charges as being impiety (questioning the state sanctioned [poly]theology) and, thereby supposedly corrupting the minds of Athens' youth. A similar charge had, years earlier, driven Anaxagoras from Athens, but many scholars believe there were probably other factors involved in the case against Socrates. Here we find an intractable mystery (and some unwarranted speculations that are merely libelous)*.

Plato's telling of Socrates' last days consists in four parts:
(1.) Euthyphro: Socrates in Action. (2.) The Apology: Socrates on Trial. (3.) Crito: Socrates in Prison. (4.) Phaedo: The Last Conversation.

Euthyphro, The Apology, and Crito are better paced and more interesting than Phaedo, which is a long Socratic argument that the soul must possess some extra-material existence, which continues, or is somehow renewed, beyond corporeal death. I suspect that most readers will enjoy the first three sections of this text, but find the last (and longest) more of a chore; at least that is my opinion. Throughout the text, Plato presents Socrates as a man of both relentless curiosity and an admirable ethical heroism.

* As to the rather facile side bar discussion that seems to have been present in earlier reviews in this forum (while noting the forensic evidence indicating that the worst of these comments was deleted): Given the full weight of the available evidence, Socrates' supposed bisexuality can add up to nothing more than idle speculation. As to his relationships with young men, it cannot be confirmed that they involved males that were considered to be below an age at which they could accountably assent--and even more importantly, IF any such relationships were of a sexual nature at all. Given the available accounts, arguments that these were NOT sexual relationships seem clearly more defensible than (slanderous?) accusations that they were. In other words, as regards this charge, we simply enter an arena of irresolvable facts and potential slander. Why go there?! What we CAN glean from the only extant accounts of Socrates' character is that he considered himself to be one who strove to consistently abide by the highest ethical standards, and that this is consistent with Plato's account here. As cited in Phaedo, these comments of Socrates' seem particularly relevant to this [particular slander]: ". . . true philosophers abstain from all bodily desires and withstand them and do not yield to them. . . those who care about their souls and do not subordinate them to the body dissociate themselves firmly from these others and refuse to accompany them on their haphazard journey; and, believing that it is wrong to oppose philosophy with her offer of liberation and purification, they turn and follow her wherever she leads."

This is the second book about Peter and what happened to him before he met Wendy. It was very enjoyable, very well-written, and followed very much in the style and story type of the first book. If you liked the first one, you'll like this one.

A strange group of pirates lands on Mollusk island looking for the chest of starstuff that Peter and Molly had brought there. Of course, we know the starstuff has been returned to London. The pirates quickly find out and head off to London. Peter is concerned about one of the pirate crew Lord Ombra who appears to take over people through their shadows. He decides to accompany the pirates back to London in an effort to warn Molly about their intentions. But things aren't always that simple.

This was a fast-paced book, it was very well-written and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I look forward to reading the third and final book of the series. I was a little disappointed that the rest of the Lost Boys played such a small role in this book; but I guess these books are about Peter after all. This book also has a somewhat open ending that will hopefully be resolved in the third book.
karissabook.blogspot.com

I received the book in a timely manner. I wanted to get it for my little brother who couldn't find the 2nd one at any of the local book stores. It came in quickly and he is enjoying reading it. He was so excited.

Another absolutely charming and action packed installment of the Peter series. As an adult, much of the fun I derive from these books are the clever way the characters you're familiar with come into being, as well as in this book the cameo appearance by a certain author who will figure heavily in Peter's future. Picking up almost where the last book left off, Peter must race to London to warn Molly of an evil figure named Lord Ombra who snatchers people's shadows rendering them near lifeless automatons, in an effort to reclaim the starstuff from Molly's father. Looking forward to the next.

I bought this book for my son who is going into 6th grade for summer reading. It's not easy to get him to read in the summer. He loved it and couldn't put it down. Now he's reading the sequel.

If you like the notion of Peter Pan, Tinkerbell, etc. this series is really excellent. I don't use the word WONDERFUL much, but they're a great read. They really do carry on the story of Peter and his friends in a believable and fun way. Really AWESOME and you won't be disappointed. The entire series is highly recommended - all three books so far.

Our son (13 months) adores the beautiful faces of the babies in this book.

As the mom of a child adopted transracially, I love the kids of all colors and ethnic backgrounds.

I'll be giving this book as a gift to all the little ones I know.

my son, 15 mos, loves this book. he likes to look at pics of other kids. nice pics and simple text.

My eight-month-old son loves looking at baby photos now. This is a good choice, with photos from Guatemala, Thailand, Greenland, Mali, India, South Africa, Fiji, Peru, Afghanistan, Malawi, Spain, Iraq, Rwanda, Bhutan, and USA. The two USA photos are of a white boy and a Native American girl. I am still looking for a book with good mixed-race photos.

Even though I have read this book over and over and over again to my granddaughter throughout her first year of life, I always love looking at the beautiful babies from around the world. Babies in colorful clothing from such countries as Mali, Afghanistan, Iraq, Spain, Peru, Guatemala, South Africa, and India, delight the readers each time the book is opened. This is a great way to travel the world while sitting in a chair snuggling with baby.

We bought this book when my daughter was 4 months old, but it is only recently that she started picking it out for me to read to her. She laughs at the different baby faces, especially the boy sticking his tongue out, and it is one book that she wants to look at over and over. I love how diverse the book is, and the message is great. It would be a nice book for those doing an international adoption. Two pacifiers up!

I'm just curious. Are all her books this depressing? This is the 2nd series of Wanda Brunstetter that I have read and so much bad happens. In the first series a little girl gets struck by lightening too. And there is also an english reporter. Can't she be a little more creative? I am a little more than half way done with the second book in this series and have figured out how it's going to end but so many times I've wanted to put it down because it's the same old repetitive things happening over and over. How many times can this person strike one families home and not be caught by someone. They are right there working most of the time and no one ever sees anything or anyone. This person(s) must be really fast in their getaway. I'm sorry to say that this series isn't doing much for me. The first series I read "Brides of Lancaster County" wasn't quite so bad. I think when I finish these I will read more of Beverly Lewis. Not that everything in her books is good but definitely not as depressing as these. There are also a lot of typos in these books. Take your time Wanda and write a better story.

I don't get it. I read the first and second book and was again left with no ending. The whole book focussus on the vandalisms and threats, as did the first book and still, no conclusion to that. Also, reading this book is like watching a soap opera. You can skip a page and read a page and not miss a beat. If you were to delete all of the repeating the same things over and over again, you'd probably be left with 100 pages rather than the nearly 300 that there is. I have many books by W. Brunstetter and other Amish others but must say that this series is a terrible bore.

Another great Amish story by Wanda Brunstetter. This one is a sequel to A Sister's Secret. You'll see many of hte characters from the first book, and also, a continuation of the mystery. If you haven't discovered Mrs. Brunstetter's books, by all means get started now. You're in for a treat.
A Sister's Secret (Sisters of Holmes County, Book 1)

Wonderful books. I cannot put them down. I feel that I am in the story with the Amish. The books are easy to read as well. I would recommend to any age group.

Again Wanda Brunsetter has done it. This is another book that you just can't put down until you are done reading it. I can't wait for the next book in the series.A Sister's Test (Sisters of Holmes County, Book 2)

This book is wonderful. I teach 1st grade and this book was able to give my students a perspective about where they live starting with their room and expanding to the U.S. We were able to make a flow map out of the information which gave my visual learners and ELL's another way of remembering this information. We tied it all in to learning our address and family history. A great book totally for classroom use.

Imagination, the Lord of Universe say mystics, poets, artists and every rebel for freedom, is hanging on the walls of this labyrinth like masterpieces in a museum of parables of desire and the whisperings of spirits telling stories that were lost for centuries on the dark side of the moon. This is a book that should be on somebody's list of greats:
100 greatest ever or 1,000 greatest or whatever - see if it makes your list.

Borges is a writer with his own voice, non-conformist, well read, man who experienced first hand political persecution in his native Argentina. Borges is a kind of writer able to transform his uniquely complex personal sensibilities to millions of his readers from all over the world. The beauty of his work is that he was able to merge the ideas of many writers, philosophers and thinkers into a style of his own. This is presentation of his work that includes stories and other writings long after Borges went blind and was able to dictate his work. Definitely type of writing meant for sophisticated minds. I completely enjoyed this book.

A nice light book for travel if you do not need all his works in one volume.

In "How To Read a Book" Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren describe the fourth level of reading. Synoptical reading challenges the reader who, having carefully and thoroughly understood several individual works, strives to hear the conversation of their ensemble. "Labyrinths" brings us the dreamlike reflections of Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges's profoundly synoptical reading. Borges heard the conversation of writers across cultures, centuries, languages, genres. Then he came back to outline over and over the one nearly infinite and unattainable truth in these stories, essays, and parables.

Yet Borges's writings remain humble and personal. With the voice of a shy, erudite uncle, Borges recounts magical reveries that came to him deep in the stacks of some dim basement of the library. Throughout the text the reader feels at once the quiet loneliness of the bookworm, the presence of the immortal, and the terrible portents in the twilight rustling of leaves.

Having decided to find out what all the references to Borges were about, I bought and read (barely) this collection. I have read and enjoyed several Latin American writers and have several more I am looking forward to. Borges, however, is unique. I just haven't figured out - uniquely what? Frankly, I was bored 80% of the time I was reading this. I have given 3 stars for the mental workout and the occasional gem.

Bleak but beautiful, The Fall is one of those books that reveals humans for what they are. The lawyer protagonist has worked all his life for justice, but to what end? He would like to believe that he has a selfless interest in downtrodden people and lofty ideals, but as the book progresses he is forced to confront his hypocrisy. He works hard ultimately for himself, he enjoys the public image of himself as a selfless person. The realization tortures him, and to resolve the hypocrisy he stops all his charitable endeavors and hurls himself into a life of selfish pleasure. But can any of us claim true selflessness? Camus is of course a master at showing us the hypocrisy and ridiculousness lurking under our highest ideals, and this book is no exception.

"The Fall" was my introduction to Camus. I believed it was high time that I read the work of this Nobel Laureate and, so, in I dived.

I regret to say that I was disappointed. Camus' short work is a monologue from its principal character, Jean-Batiste Clamence, who serves as the narrator of the tale. First person grammar is used to tell what can best be described as a very meandering story. To use the term plot would be unfair. The book simply has little or no such plot.

Now, it is probably quite unfair to come to a sweeping conclusion on the basis of one short work. The work of Camus is widely praised. Many people deem him to be one of the literary giants of the twentieth century. So, it is incumbent on me to read further into the work of Camus. I trust that my efforts will be rewarded in due course. For the moment, I feel somewhat cheated.

This is the second book I've read by this author, the first one being "The Stranger". Both books tend to examine human thoughts in the face of death. The book is more or less a collection of thoughts directed at a few abstract objects of interest like modern life, celebrity, death by suicide, and modern love. As such it's a decent book considering it's pretty readable, despite the lack of much of a story. It's kind of just a bunch of thoughts with a few events few and far between, but it manages to captivate and project a mood onto me (or maybe someone else whose reading it). He's able show the amusement and glorify this modern life in a somewhat self-effacing way, showing the advantages and the humor of this type of lifewhich includes a placid rebellion, lust and hypocrisy for a major group of its beneficiaries.

Its really not that great of a book but its hard to give three stars, because it depends what you're comparing it against. If compared to other literary masterpieces than maybe three stars, but I'll give four.

I've been reading some of the reviews for this book and can't believe that there are so many people writing about this book without really understanding it. I have read this book about a dozen times, never read any other book more than once. The first time I read it I thought it was very boring and dry, just two guys talkng in a bar. The second time I thought this Jean-Baptiste guy might be the devil talking.
About the sixth time I really understood it. The narrator of the story is the Devil himself (for real). And he was talking not to somebody in the bar, but he was talkng to me personally (for real).
This book changed my outlook on life and my actions in life. Just about every word in every sentence has more than one meaning. Does anyone else get this from the book?

Albert Camus (1913 - 1960) was a French writer and philosopher. He is often associated with existentialism, but Camus rejected any ideological classification. Camus was a young recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature when he became the first African-born writer to receive the award in 1957. He died in a car crash only three years after receiving the award. He was a social activist and Communist, and fought with the French resistance in WWII. Later he rejected Communism. The present book is one of his last works.

Camus combined his philosophy with his writing skills to produce literary art. The end result is sometimes complicated. It takes a close and careful examination to see exactly what points he is trying to make. Camus descibed The Stranger as a story about someone who was telling the unvarnished truth, but it was more complicated than that.

For The Fall, the analysis needed to discuss the work is far beyond the scope of a simple one page review as we have here. I humbly suggest that those wishing to learn more about Camus and The Fall should read some of the lengthy analysis found elsewhere.

Back then to The Fall and two basic points. As most know, the present work is a monologue set in an Amsterdam bar and parts are set on a foggy winter evening. A former Paris lawyer tells his tale to a listener. This is not a novel as we think of a novel but a slightly confused story in prose. In any case, there are two major points and a few others that we do not have space to discuss.

The first is that Camus's ideas and his theory can be found in the non-fiction work The Myth of Sisyphus (Le Mythe de Sisyphe) (1942): it is about "the absurd sensitivity." That idea is continued here in The Fall. We cannot conclude that Camus "found religion" in the present work nor are there any changes in Camus's philosophy. Any idea that he found religion is a misunderstanding of Camus's method. To say he found religion or God would be a bit like having Dostoevsky come out as an aetheist in one of his final books, i.e.: impossible. Also, Camus remains involved in "the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart." This is a continuation of his past themes, but with a different setting and with a different plot and characters.

Secondly, a similarity exists in the existential condition of loneliness and isolation that is "man's lot" in this world without "transcendental hopes." So, the character of Jean-Baptiste Clamence brings us the monologue and he describes and he reacts to his inner discovery. He does so in an extremely ironic fashion - and that is part of the "art" part of the novel along with accepting the notion of the absurd.

Overall, this is a good book from Camus that takes only a few hours to read and probably will take much more time to understand. Some will want to read it a second time, or even three or four times. It is far more complicated than The Stranger, and it is less straighforward to read and understand.

This is one instance where you should look beyond the reviews here to get a deeper understanding of the work; and, it is probably best to read some of the detailed analysis found elswhere in critical books or on the net.

I enjoyed Thompson's first two books so much that buying Cooper's Deale was automatic - but unlike previous reviewers here, I found it easy to relax into this story and smile. Unique plot elements and some eccentric characters, combined with romantic enlightenment and touching angst, all make for an entertaining tongue-in-cheek tale. Thompson's gone the lighthearted route in Cooper's Deale and readers should have no qualms about picking up a copy just for the fun of it.

I loved KI Thompson's first two books and like the previous reader couldn't wait for her next one. Unfortunately this one just didn't cut it for me. I became very frustrated with the antics of Addy and her brother and,in fact, with just about everyone in this book. There were a few laugh out loud moments but not many. I do credit KI for at least trying something different. I'm just sorry it didn't turn out better.
Humor is very achievable in lesbian fiction--read the wonderful Julia Watts. I'm sure KI will have a wonderful next book out in 2010, perhaps something comperable to "House of Clouds". What a bummer we have to wait so long!!!

I am a huge fan of KI's previous two novels, which is why I pre-ordered coopers deale and was anxious to read it. I'm sorry to say that I was disappointed. KI is a talented writer, but Coopers Deale does not exhibit this. The plot is balaise and I found myself unable to feel anything for the main character Addy. If there is romance in this romantic comedy, please let me know where to find it, and as for comedy--well I'm sorry to say I didn't crack a smile reading this novel. I'll wait until 2010 for KI's next book, I would advise you to do the same.

I must have been one of few that did not appreciate this book. It is about a 30 year old, prim and proper spinster that goes from one extreme to the other. I can handle sex in a book, but this girl goes running after the "leading man" to sleep w/ him after he completely berates her for holding to any of her virtues. Now I get it, she was finally choosing to "seize the day," but it seemed like the leading man was really pressuring her to get what he wanted. I also did not like that having virtues, and expecting more from a man than an illicit affair were such character flaws. I can apprecaite that she was more passionate than she realized, but for the last one-third of the book, she was little more to him than most all the other women had been for the past five years. It wasn't until the last 10 to 15 pages that he seemed to show any signficant emotion other than lust for her, after she revealed more of her troubled childhood. I also didn't understand how he truly became sooooo lustful for her, after having working w/ her for five years w/o really even noticing her as a woman. She finally stood up for herself at the end, and expected more than sex from him, but I wish she had played a little hard to get after their first time, rather than becoming his illicit lover! Don't know that I'll read any more of this author. I was disappointed based on the other positive reviews. I just didn't buy the love story between these two, until close to the very end. It only seemed like lust, especially on his part.

I ENJOYED THIS BOOK. IT HAD A LOT OF INTERESTING HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE ABOUT THE LOT OF WOMEN IN THIS TIME PERIOD. STRONG WOMAN AND GREAT STORY AND ROMANCE.

I really love this Guhrke book. The story of a feisty spinster secretary who works for a wonderfully handsome marriage-shy boss is formulaic, but I thought Guhrke made it work. The chemistry between prim Emma and gorgeous Harry is steamy. I have this book on my keeper shelf.

That being said, I would like to caution other romance addicts that Guhrke is a really strange author. It's almost like she has multiple personalities when she writes. Some of her books, like this one, are really first-rate. But some, like The Marriage Bed (Avon Romantic Treasure) and She's No Princess (Avon Romantic Treasure) are just terrible -- I really couldn't believe that the same author penned them.

My advice is to always take a good look at the reader comments of any Guhrke title -- and don't just pre-order figuring that you will get a good product. She's really erratic.

I read this book a while back so I don't recall all the details, but I do remember finding the heroine extremely annoying. I don't think it was just her self-esteem issues (since that's realistic enough), but moreso some of the decisions she made and some of the stuff she said. She also made me think "doormat" on several occasions. I also did not really find the hero sigh-worthy. Did not find the dialogue or the writing witty like many of the other readers did. Maybe my hopes for this was too high going in . . .

I truly enjoyed reading this book. I will admit that the beginning was tirelessly slow and left me hanging as to when these two would actually get together. But after page 138, things started to get MUCH better.
The characters were well conceived and the plot was pretty imaginative. Overall, a great story. I recommend this one!