The Lies That Bind by Susan X. Meagher

Publisher:              Brisk Press


Erin Delancy thinks she has the life she wants. She has returned to her hometown to be the town doctor as part of a contract she made with the people for paying to put her through medical school. She knows every person, every street and every situation. Though her social life as a lesbian is stunted, the fact that she can live with her mother in the home Erin grew up in means that she's seldom lonely and always has someone to do things with. 

Erin's life seems just fine until two things happen. Erin meets Katie Quinn and Erin's mother meets Katie's father. These two incidents, which are totally unrelated, change everything about Erin's settled life. Katie is a bright, aggressive lawyer from Boston who is immediately attracted to Erin and she becomes convinced early on that small town life isn't all that Erin has portrayed it to be. She lives a busy life as a lesbian and has numerous friends who support and encourage her. 

Katie believes that Erin could be the perfect partner, but not if she is going to deny how she really feels about her situation and what she wants in her life. As their relationship develops, Erin begins to remember that she had dreams she sacrificed for what she believed was her duty and she realizes that Katie will never be happy living in tiny Essex instead of Boston, but she is bound to the position for ten years. 

As Erin and Katie try to figure out how to deal with their situation, they also have to adjust to the fact that their parents have fallen in love and are planning on marrying. While Erin wants her mother to be happy, she resents the changes that are being caused in her own life and their relationship without being able to do anything about them. 

Katie doesn't mind Erin's mother. It's her father she can't tolerate being around. Having to interact with him when she visits Erin brings up sour memories from when he left her family. Neither one of them has spent any time really trying to understand the other, so their perceptions of who the other is often lead to arguments; however, with her father married to Erin's mother, Katie isn't going to be able to ignore him as she has done in the past. Either Erin or Katie is going to have to make some tremendous changes in her life to accommodate everything that is happening. The question is who, or if, one of them is going to be willing to do that. 

Brisk Press basically publishes one author – SX Meagher. The advantage to that is that an author can have her book published exactly as she wrote it. The disadvantage to that is that an author can have her book published EXACTLY as she wrote it. No one will ever accuse Meagher of not thoroughly developing her stories or characters because all of her books are big in size. Meagher knows how to write scenes, develop dialog and create character traits and she tells a good story. The reader has a real chance to "get into" her stories. The drawback to this is that there are many extraneous scenes that repeat the message that she is trying to send to the reader. The reader is liable to reach a point where she wants to say, "OK, I get it. Now how does this thing end?" The book doesn’t need scene after scene of one character having a confrontation with her parent for it to be very clear that they don't get along. Katie and her father definitely have problems. 

On the other hand, the length of Meagher's books does allow her to develop nuances of a story so that they creep up on you and you feel you have a revelation in your own thinking instead of having every issue spelled out for you. By the end of The Lies That Bind the reader realizes that Erin's relationship with her mother has never been what Erin has believed it was and that knowledge forces the reader to go back and reevaluate portions of the story and the emotions they evoked. Authors who write to meet the normal length of these genre books aren't able to perform this little bit of magic. Meagher needs to work on keeping that ability while accepting that not every scene is important to its development.

The Lies That Bind is about change. Change in relationships; change in perceptions; change in goals. It's also about how difficult change can be and sometimes how necessary it is. Meagher knows how to tell a good story, one that seems superficially to be another romance, but this one will cause the reader to think also. Don't let the length fool you. The reading passes quickly and it's worth it.

The Legacy by Susan X. Meagher

Publisher:            Brisk Press

Noel Carpenter always knew that she was adopted and had no interest in meeting her birth mother, so she is naturally surprised when she receives news from a lawyer that her mother has died and left her a bed and breakfast in Rehoboth Beach.  Noel truly enjoys teaching third graders in Baltimore and has no interest in a B&B or Rehoboth, but goes there to see her inheritance and decide what to do with it.  Toni Hooper would like to buy The Sandpiper, but she doesn’t make enough money on her salary as a handywoman and Noel isn’t willing to cut a deal that will help her.  Instead, Toni finds herself working for Noel to make improvements so that the home can be sold.  Toni has a reputation for being the town playgirl and Noel has just been dumped by her partner of ten years, so, when there is a physical attraction between them, there’s nothing to stand in their way of having a sexual relationship.  Both women start out thinking that will be enough, but, as time passes, each begins to have deeper feelings.  Neither knows how the other one feels and their lack of communication makes the situation difficult.  If they can’t overcome that, they will never be able to work out the other obstacles to their relationship.

This is a routine romance.  Two women are trying to overcome obstacles so that they can be together.  Neither character shows much depth in the beginning and since they agreed to be just sex buddies, that’s basically what the book consists of, one scene after another of them getting together and ending up in bed.  Eventually more begins to develop, but the story never becomes compelling.  There are a number of questions raised in the book that don’t really get answered and the characters don’t really seem to fit the parts they’re playing.  There are too many scenes where one of the women jumps to a wrong conclusion and goes off the deep end only to turn around completely before the page is over.  The most distracting thing about the book is the way Meagher switches dialogue from one character to another and makes it difficult for the reader to tell who is speaking.  She often starts a paragraph talking about one character and then has the other one talking, but without using the name to indicate that.  The reader frequently has to double back to pick up the thread of what is happening and try to figure out what the flow of the story is.

Meagher is a very capable writer, as she has proven in other books, but this one doesn’t come up to her normal style.  If you’ve never read any of Meagher’s books, this isn’t the one to start with.

Doublecrossed by Susan X. Meagher

Publisher:           Brisk Press

Callie Emerson and Regan Manning meet in an unusual manner.  Their partners are having an affair and Callie volunteers to call Regan and explain why she shouldn't be upset.  That improbable beginning leads to a friendship when both women realize the smartest thing they can do is to dump their girlfriends and they turn to each other for support.  After all, who understands how each one feels better than they do?  Friendship is what they agree on, but they find more and more about each other that is attractive.  Misunderstandings and their own histories keep them dancing around each other and resisting a deeper relationship because neither one intends to be doublecrossed again.

This story is full of about as many unbelievable situations as is probably possible.  One partnership is based on a so-called "open" relationship where Callie practically gives her lover permission to sleep with any women she wants to as long as she tells Callie and then gets mad when she does.  Callie uproots her life after a few days visit and moves to New England because she decides that's where her life is meant to be.  She shares beds with women and feels nothing for them, but throws herself at women in bars.  She gets quite up close and personal with women she's just met, then skips away as if they're nothing, but she's disturbed when people think she might be shallow.  Regan, who insists on a strict moral code of behavior, finds all of this attractive one minute, then repulsive the next.  Situation after situation has these women are all over the map and it's difficult to follow where they're going to end up next in the story.

The major problem with the story is that neither main character is terribly appealing, though Regan is perhaps more understandable than Callie.  Sometimes the feeling is that someone needs to grab one or both of these women and give them a good shaking to force some sense into their heads.  The story also drags on for too long.  A number of scenes could have been eliminated because they don't move the story forward or provide important information about the characters.  Add to that the misspellings and incorrect character references and the book becomes very frustrating.  More devastating for a book, the reader just may not care what happens between Regan and Callie.

Susan Meagher's books are very popular with many readers.  She's known for providing long romances that allow the reader to really immerse herself in the story.  Doublecrossed, unfortunately, doesn't come up to that standard.  The story is just OK and sometimes verges on plain irritating.