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Title: Not her best...
Review: I'm not sure what everyone else is jumping for joy about regarding this book. Yes, the setting is romantic -- it always is. Yes, the dialogue between the two characters can be funny, entertaining, tender and emotive. However, I don't think that either Johanna or Gabriel were well drawn, full characters. Half the time Gabriel's thoughts and speech indicated that he should be smiling or grinning, yet Johanna would turn to look at him and he'd have a "feroucious frown" on his face. Nothing Garwood writes lets us know why these contradictions between his thoughts and demeanor occur. Johanna is even more of a shell. We are never allowed into her head long enough to see if she has a complicated though, and I doubt that she does. Garwood relies compleely on dialogue to move the plot, and it just doesn't. To empathize with these characters, we need to feel like we understand them. Half of what they do is "out of the blue," a bad, bad sign for us dear readers.
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