The Homecoming (The Homecoming - Maggie Shayne)

Member Name: Brooke3

Product:	The Homecoming - Maggie Shayne
Date:	19/05/09 (74 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good character development

Disadvantages: The plot, the romance, the characters

When Luke Brand's close friend and mentor dies Luke realises that he wants more in his life than what he currently has. His next job takes him to Texas, the home state of the family that he's never met and he takes it as a sign from fate. A couple of months later he's planning on settling down in the small town where his family live. One night a woman shows up, claiming to be Jenny Lee, the daughter of the deceased owner of the house in which he lives. It seems clear to Luke that she is not all she appears to be.
The woman is in fact Jasmine. Jenny Lee, who was Jasmine's best friend, is dead and Jasmine is hiding from the men who murdered her. All she wants is a safe place to hide with her son while she decides what to do next. Then she meets Luke Brand who, against his better judgement, wants to protect her. Can Jasmine trust Luke? Or will she be forced to leave the one place where she may be able to make a fresh start?

I bought this book in a charity shop because I had heard good things about Maggie Shayne. After reading the synopsis I did not have high hopes for this book. I was expecting something that would be quick and easy to read, with a guaranteed happy ending but probably not the best plot. That was exactly what I got yet even with such low expectations I was still disappointed.

The beginning of the book is a little bit tedious. First you have to read all about Luke losing his friend and finding his family, then about Jasmine witnessing a murder and then finally they get to meet. The book picks up slightly after they meet, but even then there were some parts that just completely bored me.
Take for example the Brand family. This book is actually book number nine, but you don't have to read the others to follow this one. I imagine that if you have read some of the books before you might care that a couple of the other Brand's are pregnant and that several more have had children but as I haven't and have no interest in the other Brand's this part of the book just bored me. I feel that even if I had read the other books I would have felt that too much time was given to the other members of the Brand family.

I tend to like romance novels that also have a plot but the plot was so poorly done in this book that I felt that all of the time spent building it up could have been better spent building up the relationship between Luke and Jasmine. The plot was completely unoriginal, which doesn't mean that it can't be a good book, but in this case it was unoriginal and badly done. I know that one of the themes of this book was fate, lots of coincidences occur that bring Jasmine and Luke together but I felt like she took it just a little bit too far. I could believe (almost) in all of the many coincidences that bring them together (Luke's friend dying, then his next job sending him to the place where his family who he has been avoiding live. Jasmine happening to have her best friends purse which contains her mothers will leaving her the house that Luke lives in) but then she takes it too far. For example, Jasmine is a trained dancer who has been forced to work as an exotic dancer, Luke's cousin has just decided that they need a dance teacher therefore saving Jasmine from the life of a stripper and giving her a job in their small town (that seems to be populated almost exclusively by the Brand family).
The other reason why I think that she did the plot badly is that at no point do you really feel like Jasmine is in danger. There is no suspense, even at the climax of the plot.

A bad plot is forgivable in a romance novel, it's not the primary reason why you read it but I never believed at any point in this book that there was anything between Jasmine and Luke other than lust, and perhaps a little bit of desperation on Jasmine's part. That was where this book really fell down.
The romance seems very rushed and there's very little development. They meet, they have sex, the story moves on a bit and then suddenly they're in love. I felt that the characters didn't know each other very well and that both were more attracted to the image that each portrayed rather than the real person.

The one thing that Shayne did well was develop the characters. I can't say that I actually liked the characters, Jasmine came across as being stupid and Luke as narrow-minded, two characteristics that I can't stand in people. But I do feel like I know the characters, their motivations and their backgrounds. It's unfortunate that the main characters didn't get to know each other in the same way!

I would not recommend this book. The plot is badly done and unoriginal, the romance isn't quite beilevable and I found it difficult to like the characters.

Summary: This didn't even meet my low expectations