Title: Water Bound
Author: Christine Feehan
Genre: Paranormal
This is another book for which I did not receive a RITA® Reader Challenge review, so I’ve rounded up some strong reviews for the purposes of this collection. I have not, however, assigned a letter grade to this review. This book finaled in the Paranormal Romance category.
Plot Summary: Off the shores of Sea Haven, a beautiful diver rescues a man from drowning, a man with no memory of who he is-or why he seems to possess the violent instincts of a trained killer. But soon, he and his savior will be engulfed in a storm of dizzying passion and inescapable danger…
This book has a 3.98 average at GoodReads.
KristieJ, one of my favorite romance reviewers online, wrote in her four-star review at GoodReads:
I’ll be honest and say what intrigued me about this book was reading that the heroine had a form of high functioning autism. I thought this worked very well in the hero in Jennifer Ashley’s The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie so I was curious as to how it would work in the heroine in a contemporary. And I’m quite pleased to say for me it worked very well. There is no question that Rikki Sitmore has her share of ‘quirks’. She had a terribly sad childhood, losing her parents at an early age due to fire and having the nightmare of fires follow and destroy after that. She has finally found a home in Sea Haven, the same town setting as the Drake Sister series. She has found a family of sisters now; not sisters by blood, but sisters of the heart. She also has a successful job as a sea urchin hunter. She is drawn to water in many mysterious ways. For example, when having nightmares about the fires that have destroyed her life, all faucets in her home mysteriously turn on. She can manipulate rain and she is never completely at home unless she is diving in the ocean. Her life is going along as well as it can considering her quirks until she rescues a strange man in the middle of a ocean disruption. I know some of this sounds odd – it’s odd to write it, but trust me, when reading this book, it made perfect sense.
This book is available from Amazon | Kindle | BN & nook | WORD Brooklyn
Love the woman as savior. The plot description promises intrigue and action and the cover shows that some of it will be of the up close and personal variety.
Sounds like a good one.
Great review! Ill get a copy of this for a relative of mine, she just loves a book with a good story and a twist that would end up in an intriguing fantasy story. I just know she’ll like this
I read this, why didn’t I sign on for a review? I really liked this and as Lev is one of the seven Prakenskii brothers and Rikki has 5 housemates, I’m hoping that means we’ll be seeing the rest of them.
I have a love/hate thing with Christine Feehan. I loved the Drake Sisters & now this book, but would rather drive stakes in my eyes than read the Carpathian books.
Love, Love this book.. Christine is one of my fav paranormal authors.. Good luck to her..
LOVED this book. Have already read it twice!
Oh, I didn’t see this one on the list or I’d’ve sent you a review.
I enjoyed Water Bound. I appreciated the fact that Lev and Rikki’s relationship was the main focus of the book. I feel the older Drake sisters were gypped since so much of their novellas were spent on setting up the series. That was not the case with this book. CF really told us who the two main characters were (I’m still waiting to learn more about the real Ilya, even though he’s technically had his own book.) All-in-all, I felt this was an excellent “bridge” book connecting the Drake Sisters series to this new spin-off. Even though we’ve been introduced to the other “sisters of the heart,” we still have much to learn about them.
I loved we got to see Jonas again as he’s one of my favorite characters from the Drake Sisters series. And I’m glad we have the Prakenskii brothers’ reunion to look forward to in a future book in this series. If the author had tried to make that happen in book 1, it would have been too rushed, with no time to address the various issues more fully.
Another plus is this book can be read as a stand-alone even if you’ve never read the Drake Sisters books. Though I do think you get more out of it if you’ve read the previous series of 7 books.
@Donna I read her other 3 series, but have never read a Carpathian book and never plan to.
After reading this review, I might have to give Feehan another chance. I picked up her Dark Melody, Carpathian Novel and could not get over how repetative the writing was. I even tried reading it two different times because the synopsis sounded so interesting. I think it is time to give Ms. Feehan another chance.
I guess I’m in the minority, but this one was a big fat DNF for me. I liked the autism aspect, but found Feehan’s writing to be horrible. Everything was a water metaphor. She repeated descriptions over and over (and over.) And she needed to lose about 100 pages of drawn out description and info dumping about the diving.
I loved the Drake sisters series and couldn’t stand this one past about page 100.
I really really really enjoyed the Drake sisters. I had huge high hopes for this book and was extremely excited by the prospect of the Prakenskii brothers.
That being said, I could not stand how his mighty wang was able to cure (bypass?) her autism enough for them to be the perfect match. Seriously?
@ChrisZ. You may be aware of this and I mean no insult in pointing it out, but there is a big difference between high-functioning autism and profound autism. Profound is usually what is presented to people as an example of Autism. A person with profound will like as not demonstraite the extremes of the behaviors. A person who is high-functioning or has Mild Autism is often a very ‘quirky’ version of someone with out autism. There are Mild Autistics who “pass” for normal. (what ever normal is). Even beyond that there is Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a whole other disorder, but has distinct similarites and overlaps with Autism.
I don’t know how Feehan addresses autism in the book, as I have not read it. I am certainly interested in seeing how she did.
No insult taken, there is a huge spectrum of behavior when talking about Autism.
I read the book when it first came out (had even pre-ordered it for my kindle) and I know I had several moments of wanted to throw the kindle at the wall. She can’t allow any of her “sisters of the heart” into her home and tells the guy “No one comes into my house. I don’t like it.” Then he stares into her eyes and moves in. Granted, he is injured and she, who can’t touch anyone, must nurse him to health (again with the staring into her eyes).
There is also a scene where the sheriff and a bad guy come looking for him and she heads them off: “Already her brain was very close to that place, her own world, where she was safe and no one could touch her – not even a master interrogator. Peter Ivanov studied her face for a long time. Her fingers were continually moving, spinning in strange little circles, and occasionally she’d lift them to her mouth to blow on them. Spin, on, tow, three times, and then blow.” a few questions….” She nodded again. The fingers continued to spin and she blew on them every third time, as if she was blowing out candles” The bad guy and the sheriff have a whole conversation, she continues to rock, spin and blow. The bad guy gets a bit aggressive. “Rikki’s rocking increased in strength. Her hands began to flap, fingers spinning and then she’d blow on the tips as if putting out a flame”…more conversation between the men, she eventually nods when the sheriff asks if they can look inside, she is deep in her mind where no one can hurt her, then the magic penis man pulls her out of it and tells her the bad man won’t come back. Then she “smiled up at him” and they make love all afternoon. Really?
It seemed like Feehan has a good idea of a lot of behaviors of people who test on the autism spectrum. I’m not disputing that a lot of her characterization of Rikki rings true. My problem is that, although I love a paranormal connection, this seemed a little to magic to me. He can help her overcome her issues with food color and textures by preparing it himself. Wow. She’s an adult and has had her “sisters” trying to feed her for years. He can help her with her issues of human touch by holding on to her anyway when she says to stop. Again, her sisters have been trying to hug her for years.
I just thought the story had a lot more potential and it was a bit wasted by the relative ease of the relationship.
sorry! typing with a bandaid on my index finger! I was so busy I didn’t catch the miss-spelled words!
I was also in the minority on this one- the only reason I finished it was because it’s Christine Feehan, it must get better! I’ll be honest, it’s been so long since I read this I’ve really forgotten what specifically bored me so much. However, I do remember thinking I wouldn’t be reading the next book. So I was shocked when I saw the grade it received!
@ChrisZ, by those examples, I can see you problems. It seems like the girl has more than Mild, but not quite profound. This one probably just falls back to suspension of disbelief. Feehan, for you, did not succeed in suspending.
Having known people with different levels of autism, I am not sure now if I would like this book. Might give it a try still. No worries about the misspelled words. Hope your finger gets better.