| Title: | The Dream Unfolds | |
|---|---|---|
| Author: | Author - Barbara Delinsky Narrator - Erin Yuen |
|
| Publisher | Dreamscape Audio | |
| Publication Date: | Audio - November 2013 Print - 1990 |
|
| Publisher's Description | Builder Gideon Lowe and interior designer Christine Gillette share a dream--to develop the Rice estate into the most elegant comdominium community on the Atlantic seaboard. But that dream is all they share--they mix like oil and water. He calls her a spoiled prima donna and she pegs him for an arrogant chauvinist. But good old-fashioned lust can circumvent misconceptions like nothing else. | |
| My rating: | *** | |
I enjoyed this book. Although it was written in 1990, which really doesn’t feel that long ago to me, it avoided so many of the things that make me cringe about older books. Christine and Gideon’s conversation about why neither of them felt the need to get “car phones” (they didn’t want to be accessible at all times) was hilarious to me, but that and their frequent use of landlines were what dated this book; otherwise, this novel could be situated in 2013 and have turned out pretty much exactly the same.
Something that I appreciated was that when Gideon was a bit of a macho Neanderthal, Christine called him out on it, instead of accepting it as normal. Likewise, when I felt that, regardless of the things that I didn’t like below, there was more story to tell here and the author ended things a bit abruptly for my tastes. Erin Yuen’s serviceable narration neither added to nor detracted from the flow of this audiobook.
What I didn’t like (click on blurred area to reveal hidden text):
Christine’s daughter, Jill, is not mentioned until more than halfway through the book. It made Christine’s internal dialog from before the revelation feel false, since all of her subsequent thoughts relate to her daughter. Jill is such a huge part of the book once her existence is revealed that hiding it felt needlessly gimmicky to me.
Gideon fell in love with Christine so quickly that it was unbelievable. It seemed to me that he goes from finding her obnoxious to wanting to date her to loving her in the course of two or three chapters. Seriously? I appreciated her more cautious approach, because it seemed to me that, as soon as he decides not to hate her or treat her like some iteration of that woman who annoys him, he’s like 85% on the way to loving her. Nice, but possibly a little overwhelming/creepy if thought about for too long.
Leave a Reply