High Tide
Grade : D+

I started reading romance seriously a little over six years ago, and since then I have read every new book Jude Deveraux has published, and most of her backlist as well. After reading High Tide, I am starting to ask myself why I have been such a slavish Deveraux devotee. Like many of Deveraux's recent offerings, it has some humor and some promise. Unfortunately, the overall impression it leaves is one of a slap-dash effort, hastily thrown together to meet a deadline.

Fiona Burkehalter is a New Yorker through and through. She's dedicated to her job of creator and designer of Kimberly, a Barbie-like fashion doll. Suddenly, a potential client for her firm requests that Fiona handle his account. He is interested in no one else, so Fiona must leave her beloved New York for a three day fishing trip to Florida. Her trip begins badly when she inadvertently destroys someone's property in the airport. Her stunt lands her in jail, and her trip only gets worse from there. When she is released and heads off for the fishing trip, she discovers that the guide is the very man whose property she destroyed. His name is Ace Montgomery, and he isn't too happy to see her either.

Things go from bad to worse when Fiona awakens on the fishing boat with a dead body on top of her. Before she even knows what's happening, she and Ace are the prime suspects in the murder. They find out through the newspaper that they were both beneficiaries of the dead man's will. Instead of giving themselves up to the police, they decide to hide out and try to solve the murder by themselves. To do this they must find out how they are connected, which means revealing their pasts to each other. Fiona has a boyfriend and Ace has a fiancee, but they still find it hard to ignore their growing attraction. But before they can resolve their feelings, they must figure out who is trying to frame them, and uncover secrets from both their pasts - all while staying one step ahead of the police.

This is not a very suspenseful book. It's Deveraux's first crack at romantic suspense, and it shows. Ace and Fiona are supposed to be fugitives from the law, but only the most inept police force could have failed to find them; they return to Ace's property over and over! I guess the police weren't looking there. There are a lot of secrets revealed during the course of the novel, but it doesn't happen in a way that makes sense. That doesn't mean that the book is hard to get through. There's a lot of humor, both in the plot and the dialogue, and the story itself has some ideas that could have been okay with a little polishing.

The main problem here is that High Tide is a published, hard-cover novel that reads like a rough draft. The writing is awkward, and the story seems to meander all over the place. There are a lot of characters, and they tend to surface at odd moments. None of them seem like possible murderers. I got the distinct impression that Deveraux was making it all up as she went along with no master plan in mind, and the ending only confirmed this feeling.

Deveraux's books always require a lot of suspension of disbelief, and this one is no exception. The characters are cute, but they never seem like real people. Ace, like every other Montgomery, is fabulously rich. Fiona is a six feet tall and a dead ringer for Ava Gardner, but improbably, she wears size seven shoes. They are larger than life, and so is the plot, which is consistently hard to credit. What is supposed to be fanciful and adventurous generally comes across as silly.

I've seen Deveraux do much better than this, but she seems to be running on autopilot now. If, like me, you somehow feel compelled to read every single one of her books (perhaps in hopes of discovering another Knight in Shining Armor or Sweet Liar), I recommend checking this one out of the library.

Reviewed by Blythe Smith
Grade : D+

Sensuality: Warm

Review Date : November 2, 1999

Publication Date: 2000

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Blythe Smith

I've been at AAR since dinosaurs roamed the Internet. I've been a Reviewer, Reviews Editor, Managing Editor, Publisher, and Blogger. Oh, and Advertising Corodinator. Right now I'm taking a step back to concentrate on kids, new husband, and new job in law...but I'll still keep my toe in the romance waters.
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