Windwalker
Grade : D+

You know, the hardest part of writing a review isn't supposed to be picking a category for the book. Windwalker isn't really a Romance since the main protagonists don't actually meet until page 265 and there isn't a traditional HEA. Despite a few half-hearted paranormal elements, it's not really a Paranormal either. And, even though the main female character spends a lot of time pondering her past and future and trying to "find" herself, Women's Fiction also doesn't seem right. As for Romantic Suspense, since the female protagonist is the target of a malevolent stalker – standard fare for Romantic Suspense – I was sorely tempted to make it easier on myself by simply going with that. However, as the stalker plotline is frequently overshadowed by everything else going on in the book and because of the notable lack of a traditional romance, Romantic Suspense doesn't quite cut it either. The fact is this book isn't really anything and therein lies the problem. The author clearly never decided exactly what kind of book to write and the result is a mish-mash of a lot of different elements that never really come together into anything even remotely compelling. In the end, because - and only because - the book is being issued under Tor's Paranormal Romance imprint, that's the designation you'll find at the top of this review.

Reeling from the death of a brother for which she feels responsible, photojournalist Justine Callaway seeks to get away from it all by taking a tenancy as the sole caretaker of a spooky English country estate. As she soon learns, the family who owned the house was shattered years earlier when one brother killed the other. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? But once Justine settles in she:

  • Has a run-in with a threatening town punk.
  • Becomes the focus of the town's resident psychopath who calls himself "The Watcher".
  • Begins to see weird wolf-like images in her photographs of the house.
  • Develops an obsessive curiosity about Adam, the missing brother who is believed to have murdered his sibling.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Adam, now hiding in remote Namibia, spends his working hours cave diving for diamonds and his off-hours obsessively watching a family of brown hyenas, or windwalkers as they are called by the natives. He also seems to spend a lot of time engaging in a variety of scuffles with an e-e-e-v-i-l Russian out to harm the environment and mooning over his "soulmate", a woman he has yet to meet. Adam is certain he will know her when he sees her and – surprise, surprise – he discovers after seeing her photograph in a magazine that his "soulmate" is none other than Justine. How does he know? He recognizes her, believe it or not, by her tattoos.

Okay, you might think that you have one of those "lovers from another time" stories here and, in one sense, you do. The problem is, however, that there's also so much other stuff going on that it's hard to get a handle on any of it, including:

  • Your snarling teenage kid out for revenge.
  • Your stalker.
  • Your e-e-e-v-i-l villain in Namibia.
  • Your brown hyenas.
  • Your ghostly wolf images.
  • Your basic nice guy in the wings who loves Justine.
  • Your requisite interfering and disapproving mother.

All that and love-beyond-time, too!

To add to my problems, the head-hopping here is completely out of control. Frankly, I'm usually not someone too bothered by multiple POV's, but the hopping here is so off the charts that I often found myself literally scratching my own head trying to figure out exactly whose head I was in at any given point. No matter how you look at it, it just doesn’t add up to good – or even remotely comprehensible – story-telling. And while it might be refreshing to some that the standard Romance HEA isn't in evidence, I felt manipulated more than once by the author's indulgence in near-misses.

On a positive note, Natasha Mostert's prose is clean and readable – it's her overt manipulation of the reader and plotting that are problematical. If the author can ever bring herself to decide what kind of book she's writing and then stick with it, I think we might have something. As it is, anybody looking for a compelling tale will probably find that this non-Romance/non-Paranormal/non-Women's Fiction/non-Romantic Suspense leaves a lot to be desired.

Reviewed by Sandy Coleman
Grade : D+

Sensuality: Subtle

Review Date : March 16, 2005

Publication Date: 2005/04

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