Official Review: Heart's Desires by Kasey Martin

[CaitlynLynch]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Heart's Desires" by Kasey Martin.]

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1 out of 4 stars

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Heart’s Desires is an interracial romance between Charlene ‘Charlie’ Heart, an accountant working at a high-end nightclub in Dallas, and Jake Cameron, a former Special Forces soldier now running a private investigations firm. The two protagonists are already acquainted since their cousins Korri and Tony, who featured in the author’s previous book Designer Desires, are engaged to be married. Korri, in particular, is very keen for Charlie and Jake to get together and spends much of her time matchmaking the pair.

The book opens with a fight scene between unnamed protagonists, so it is evident from the beginning that there will be a suspense sub-plot. This comes into play when Lorenzo, the owner of the club where Charlie works, asks her to do some forensic accounting on the club’s records. At the same time, Jake’s company is asked by the FBI to assist in looking into the operations of Lorenzo’s cousin, a mobster who has moved to Dallas from New Jersey.

While this suspense sub-plot is consistent and holds together well, leading up to a solid conclusion, I felt that the book itself was not well-written. The book’s language was stilted and the dialogue felt very unnatural. I have no objection to interracial romances being told in a realistic way, and I am all for people of color telling their own stories, but Charlie never experiencing any racism as a black woman dating a white man seemed extremely unrealistic.

The author seems to have fallen into the classic trap of ‘telling rather than showing’. There were several unwieldy information dumps, flashbacks telling us all about Charlie and Jake’s dating pasts and the reason why they were both afraid of commitment, and an extremely confusing timeline. At one point the author set up for them to go out on a date, down to describing Charlie’s makeup, and then just completely skipped over the date itself to ‘tell’ the reader that they had a wonderful time. There was constant head-hopping from Charlie to Jake and back again, often within the same scene, to the point where it became extremely confusing.

The characters seemed flat and one-dimensional; every woman was black and beautiful, every man (apart from a token Black Best Friend) was white and gorgeous. There was a repetitive element where an attractive black woman would hit on Jake, Charlie got mad and called her a ‘heffa’ (sic) and, shortly afterward, an attractive white man would hit on Charlie, Jake got jealous and acted like a possessive caveman. After about the third repetition of this cycle, I honestly found myself rolling my eyes every time another character of the opposite sex even spoke to one of the protagonists because I knew what was coming.

Towards the end of the book, the author herself actually seemed to lose interest in the protagonists and spent a lot of time setting up a romance between Lorenzo and Chase who are apparently the protagonists in Chasing Desires, the next book in the series. In my opinion, this is poor practice; every book in a series should stand alone, from the meeting of the protagonists to any plots that have been set up being fully resolved. The suspense plot of Heart’s Desires was not really resolved despite the violent confrontation foreshadowed at the beginning of the book being played out, and it seems evident that anyone reading the next book without having read this one would be either thoroughly confused or forced to suffer through a huge info-dump to tell them what had happened in the previous story.

I don’t often struggle to finish a book, but this one really felt like wading through quicksand. I can’t in good conscience recommend it to anyone, and therefore I am awarding it one out of four stars.

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Heart's Desires
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Like CaitlynLynch's review? Post a comment saying so!

[Rosemary Okoko]

This would have been a good book if the author developed it well and avoided the confusion it seems to cause. This is a wasted book. I am definitely not reading this one. Thank you for your honest review.

[CaitlynLynch]

I was actually far more interested in the suspense sub-plot of the book, because the romantic 'main' plot was just so terrible. There was no development of the characters and frankly I didn't find the characters in the least likable. The author really got herself onto my "DNR" (Do Not Read) list, I'm afraid!

[Fakayode Temitope]

The book almost caught my attention at the beginning but seemed moduled up as the sub-plot case were not clearly stated. It so discouraging reading the book.

[Kelebogile Mbangi]

You're absolutely correct Caitlyn, I would be shocked too about Charlie not receiving any discrimination. Sounds like a poorly written book and a time waster. Thank you for your honest review.

[udoksman]

its is an interesting story the protagonist and the author are a little interesting but confusing

[Deediana]

It was not Worth a read, nothing intriguing about it

[Benjal]

WoW I really enjoy reading this book I wish the author can keep on writing books like this

[CaitlynLynch]

You're absolutely correct Caitlyn, I would be shocked too about Charlie not receiving any discrimination. Sounds like a poorly written book and a time waster. Thank you for your honest review.

SO MUCH THIS. I'm white, but I try to be as enlightened and decent a human being as I can, and I observe discrimination going on around me every single day (and I try to stand up against it as much as I have the spoons for). I have non-white friends who have dated white people and they have almost INEVITABLY suffered discrimination; even if it is behind their backs when their partner has been told 'why aren't you dating a nice white boy/girl instead'. It's inconceivable that Charlie wouldn't have experienced any backlash for dating a white guy.

[LadyLynn]

Very interesting. I have picked up free books from Nook by unknown authors in this genre and have managed to find a few hidden gems. I'm a bit disappointed to hear that one with so much potential tanked.

[kimuell Jay Noche ma]

I like this author. I like how she develops greet stories. I enjoyed reading this book, considering that I read the continuation before reading this one. This was a comfortable read with everything flowing

[Rnwulfekuhle]

It sounded like a very interesting book but I wish it would have ended better. Wished her book turned out better than that.

[Abigael Chepkoech]

So far the author has a story to tell but there is some instances the story didn't really flow as expected. The creativity is what I admire.

[Fakwema]

It's a nice ?