Just finished reading this one and will be getting it in the mail today to PhillyCarol. Enjoy it! I sure did. Great character development I thought.

Here is the list of readers for this book. It is part of the Round Robin started by Phillycarol.

phillycarol
Ealisaid
glade1
lilmtaz
meshe
Maurean
oldreader
mysteryfan03
KAT123
spaceystacey

Received 2/23/05

Received in the mail today! Thanks! Will get to it shortly. :)

Decent story but at times I thought it was a little too long-winded and a little predictable. I did get caught up in it at the end wondering what was going to happen.

It's off to Ealisaid next. I hope to get in the mail tomorrow.

Received in the mail this afternoon. Thanks!

I finished reading "The Smoke Jumper" last night and found it to be boring, predictable, and pedestrian. I had to force myself to finish it.

I'm not sure why the novel is called "The Smoke Jumper" since it has very little to do with smoke jumping except at the beginning of the story. The story centers on two best friends, Ed and Connor, who spend a lot of time proving how macho they are by using the word "man" in practically every sentence they speak to each other, as in "Oh man, the dialogue in this book was really poor."

Ed falls in love with perfection itself in the form of Julia, a woman who works as a rehab counselor for troubled youth. She takes the kids out hiking and parrots Oprah by asking them "How did that make you feel?". Unfortunately the most interesting character in the story is Skye, one of the troubled teens, but Evans writes her out of the novel almost immediately.

When Ed introduces Julia to Connor, it's love at first sight, but naturally they keep those feelings bottled up out of respect for poor Ed. After Ed and Julia marry, they desperately long for a child, but Ed discovers that he's sterile. In one of the stupidest plot devices ever, they ask Connor to be a sperm donor and father Julia's child. It would have been simple enough to get some of Ed's genes in there by asking one of his brothers or his father to be the donor, which is what any sensible couple would have done, but Evans never even addresses this. Go figure.

Bad parenting rears its ugly head when Julia risks her life and that of her young daughter by running off to worn-torn Uganda so that she'll "feel closer" to Connor since he once took a series of photographs there.

This book came off way too much like a Harlequin romance for me. I'll be sending this off to Glade1 and I really hope that she likes it a lot more than I did.

Received in the mail from Ealisaid today. Will get to it right after the book I'm reading now.

I enjoyed this book very much. I did not feel it was too predictable, although there were some things I anticipated (but I enjoy historical romances and they are very formulaic). I actually liked this better than The Horse Whisperer. I really liked Ed, the "secondary" man in the book more than Connor, whose motives I could not always understand. I would recommend it. I mailed it to lilmztaz on 3-26-04.

got in the mail

received today in along with 2 other books. Will read asap and get in mail to next on list.

Update - July 25 - I'm almost finished with this book and hope to mail on to Maurean by the end of the week. Sorry for the delay.

I finished this book yesterday and enjoyed it more than I expected. I had this author confused with Nicholas Sparks (whose books I don't really like very much), so I didn't expect much. Though much of the plot was predictable, I'm glad I read this and didn't pass on it. I'll get it off in the mail next week to continue this bookring.

update 8/6/04, mailed to Maurean today.

This was in my mailbox today...along with another bookring, so I will get to this very soon, and journal once its read!

Well, I tried over the weekend to get into this book, but its just not capturing my attention, and I have just soooo many books right now on Mt. TBR beconing my name, I feel inclined to mail this one off this week sometime to make its way to oldreader, where I hope it can be appriciated...* mailed 9/4

just arrived

saw the end coming yet had some unexpected surprises.This is not a new author to me and enjoyed his other writings.Thanks for sharing.found some parts a bit sappy but overall enjoyed it.will send to mysteryfan03 by Sat.mailed 9/24/04

RELEASE NOTES:

mailed today.

Got this yesterday! THanks!

This book was better than I thought it would be. I liked it better than the Horse Whisperer. However, it really got slow in the last hundred pages or so, very predictable and boring.

I agree with Ealisaid that Skye was one of the most interesting characters and I hated to see her leave so soon. Also, it makes sense for the couple to have considered Ed's family for the sperm donation.

I was a little uncomfortable with Julia and Connors love for each other. It seemed too pat and they really didnt spend that much time together in the years that the book takes place. (A little too Harlequinesque for me)

I enjoyed most of the book, but the story went downhill after we got to know everyone. Thanks for sharing this book!!

Note-mailed to KAT123 on November 15

will send off this week before i move

Just received this in the post today. Part of Phillycarol's RR#4. Made it back to me. I will be re-releasing in Bunnylady's BookBox # 2 that I am sending out tomorrow.

5/19/05 It looks like this one was selected as a read but not yet journalled as such.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/2413013

This book has washed ashore at the Lost Book Island after not being heard from for many months. This new arrival will be shown to a room and be allowed a bit of rest before being introduced to the many fun things to do here at the island.

All around there are books sipping cool drinks under shady palms while other books participate in a wide variety of beach sports. There is plenty of sand, surf and sun here for all of the lost and wayward books to enjoy.

It is hoped that very soon a new journal entry will come to rescue this book from the island and send it back out into the BookCrossing world so that it may continue on its journey. It is hoped that the new journal entry will tell all the interested parties where this book has been this long time and where it will be traveling to next.