Born To Be Wild

How many of us can say that we are living the life of our dreams and being paid for it too?

BORN TO BE WILD opens with Mary Lisa Beverly winning her third best actress Emmy for a daytime drama in a row. Drifting on a high, she is suddenly jolted back to reality when an innocuous shopping trip leaves her bruised and battered after a collision with a hit and run driver. Hounded by paparazzi Poker Hodges, she decides to take a long overdue visit home to Goddard Bay. Plunged into the turmoil of her family, Mary Lisa longs for a return to her simple life, but she cannot rest without finding out who wants her dead. At her father’s insistence, Jack Wolf follows Mary Lisa back to Malibu where Mary Lisa continues to receive life threats and Poker mysteriously disappears. Aided by her friends in the Colony, a lovely gated community where she resides, Mary Lisa is determined to get her life back. Will she be able to succeed?

Great title, great premise, but the “pow” just doesn’t quite make it! Mary Lisa is a wonderfully spunky heroine and her sidekick Lou Lou is a total hoot! This story is filled with good tongue in cheek humor, which is always great in a summer read. However, this review found the plot line to be somewhat contrived and unnecessarily convoluted because there were just too many characters. This story is set in Malibu, and includes beach scenes, town scenes, scenes at Mary Lisa’s house, as well as scenes set on the fictitious soap opera where Mary Lisa stars, from which the book gets its title. This is enough to keep track of, but there are also scenes in Mary Lisa’s hometown of Goddard Bay, where her love interest Chief of Police Jack Wolf hails from. Great transitions make this maze relatively easy to follow, but too many characters are introduced without being fully realized. This decreased this reviewer’s overall enjoyment of the tale.

This reviewer used to be a great fan of Ms. Coulter and still enjoys her FBI series. However, it must be noted that in this reviewer’s opinion, the quality of her latest efforts in paperback has not been up to her usual standards. While BORN TO BE WILD shows a marked improvement over her last paperback, this reviewer anxiously awaits Ms. Coulter’s return to her normal excellence. This reviewer does recommend this story to fans of romantic suspense, particularly to those who are fans of Ms. Coulter.

September 2006