03 May 2015

Miss Taken by Cleo Scornavacca

 Love........................The Ultimate Loss of Control

Rain and Raven Medici are identical twins. Although they come from a loving close-knit family their childhoods couldn’t have been more different. Raven went to school and was exposed freely to the outside world. Rain on the other hand was born with a blood disorder and denied many normal childhood experiences.

Once grown, Raven becomes a lawyer at their dad’s firm Kane & Medici in NYC. Rain along with her only childhood friend Tommy Conte, builds a very successful business as professional photographers. Traveling between Europe and Manhattan, and enjoying a world that was kept from her, Rain vows never to be controlled again.

Dominick Kane is a product of his upbringing. He’s powerful, self-assured and knows he can achieve anything he desires. Nothing gets in his way. There is only one thing he has ever failed at. A relationship with his father Vincent Kane. Upon his father’s death, Dominick vows revenge. The events he sets in motion put him on a collision course he himself will be unable to control.

In a bizarre twist of fate, Dominick kidnaps Raven as part of his plan for revenge. Only to discover afterward, he has taken Rain by mistake. Rain knows she can never survive being confined again. So she strikes a bargain with the devil and agrees to help Dominick get back what he feels rightly belongs to him. His father’s share of Kane & Medici.

Dominick decides to use the strong attraction growing between Rain and himself to control her in every way imaginable. Too bad no one ever taught Dominick you can’t control the heart. Nothing could have prepared him for the effect Rain would have on his.

Will this plan of revenge turn into unconditional love? Or will Dominick and Rain’s need for control ultimately destroy them and any possible chance for a real future
together.......
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18674369-miss-taken?ac=1
I was quite excited to start this book today. I loved the premise of Miss Taken – the bad guy falling in love with his captive because he abducted the wrong twin. When I began the book I was even more excited as it was narrated in the first person from Rain’s point of view. However, within a few pages my excitement began to dim because the author kept switching from present tense to past tense, the transitions were not only jarring but they were a sign of poor editing. As Miss Taken was available on Amazon, I downloaded the sample to set my mind at ease about the editing. However, the sample showed that the tense issues were not only not corrected during the editing process, but the author’s edits were also visible in the purchased copy. What do I mean by this? You can see where someone has stricken out the text and made changes; for example: There had It had never been a sexual relationship between Tommy and me. Not good, but ultimately not the reason for the low rating.

Despite this and because I received a review copy, I soldiered on in the hopes that the story would suck me in to the point that I could overlook the errors and tense issues as I have found – on more than one occasion – a diamond in the rough, a great story hidden within bad editing. Sadly, this was not my experience with Miss Taken. As I said, the premise was great but the execution was not. I found Rain to be extremely disappointing as a female lead. Initially she comes off as a strong and sassy woman, living her life to the fullest despite a somewhat debilitating medical condition. Yet time and time again, her behavior was equivalent to that of a doormat. Just when I thought she found her backbone, she’d cave at Dominick’s first apology OR even worse, apologize to him first for something that was his fault. I lost track of the number of times that she allowed Dominick to walk all over her – it was bad enough that the final time in this installment that she left him did not leave me with the expected feeling of suspense I know the author intended. As for Dominick, egomaniacal does not even begin to do him justice. Add to that his volatility and obsessiveness, it was too much for me to stomach which is why Rain’s constant forgiveness made no sense to me. I could not relate at all. This left the story feeling flat and disjointed for me.

I usually give a book two stars when it falls within the “Just okay” area and reserve one-star ratings for books that leave me thinking “I hated it and I want my time back.” I didn’t hate Miss Taken, so it’s not really a one-star read, but I didn’t consider it “just okay” either. It was more of a situation where I really didn’t care what happened to the characters and there just wasn’t that much that appealed to me, no matter how much I tried to like it. I enjoy abductor-abductee romances and have many in my Kindle library that I have read and reread. I was looking forward to adding Ms. Scornavacca’s Miss Taken series to my collection but sadly that will not be happening as Miss Taken didn’t work for me left me with no desire to continue the series.

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