Tuesday, March 24, 2009

FRAGILE by Shiloh Walker

Publisher: The Berkley Publishing Group
Date Published: February 2009
ISBN: 978-0-425-22579-0
Suspense/ Romance
Trade paperback
Reviewed by Sarah



Devon Manning is a young woman of strength out to make a real difference in the lives of the children she helps escape from nightmarish lives as a social worker. Devon knows how important it is to reach out to these children because she had help escaping her own nightmarish childhood.

Luke Rafferty left the military to become a doctor and settle into a normal life. His frequent encounters with the lovely Ms. Devon at the hospital have given him a glimpse of that life. He never dreamed that he’d be able to find love, and gladly accepts the new battle to break through Devon’s emotional wounds and win her heart.


FRAGILE is a good story, and a well done reminder that life can be dark and dangerous. Luke and Devon are wonderful and easy to relate to. The conversations are realistic and the different scenes are easy to imagine, without being overly descriptive. Ms. Walker does an excellent job of creating a scenario in a brief and meaningful paragraph. Every part of the book is reality-based and Ms. Walker did an excellent job writing a plausible story.
The story was frustrating in that it was slow-paced at points where it ought to have been action-filled, and too quick and shallow during the action scenes. There is a great deal of story spent on building Devon and Luke’s relationship. It is a nice change to most stories where too little time is spent on developing a relationship and the main characters just fall for each other in a heap of “love at first site”. Rather, the suspense went a little stale in the end. My other biggest complaint is that there are characters that are purposefully kept shadowy as a way to keep the reader from putting the threads together before the authoress was ready to disclose it.

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