Reviews for Viejos Suenos

The average rating for Viejos Suenos based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-07-01 00:00:00 Birgitta Granberg [ He was the anonymous critic whose review so devastated her. That review was a draft and he never meant it to go to print. The hero realizes the damage he did and doesn�t expect easy forgiveness. (He gets it, though � this is an HP) (hide spoiler)]

Review # 2 was written on 2018-02-12 00:00:00 Audie Murphy Re Winter of Dreams - Susan Napier brings us book three of her : Marlow Family Series. This one features the only daughter besides Hugh from the first book who doesn't perform or take the stage. Olivia is an artist and when the story starts she has hit a roadblock of major proportions. First, she had a disastrous love affair that really broke her heart, then she tried a new direction in her art and then she got a really, really scathing review that not only decimated her as an artist, but decimated her as a female person too. To totally top all that off, Olivia had a hissy fit at her gallery showing and the guy who rescued her got her a bit drunk on restorative brandy, she propositioned him and then he turned her down. Then she got glandular fever (otherwise known as mononucleosis or 'kissing disease') and she collapsed for several months. Now she can't paint, she can't feel happy and she is worried that she has lost her painting focus. In steps her non-identical twin sister, (who gets the next book BTW.) Roz is an uber interfering idiot. She takes the emotional painting of the critic that Olivia did in outrage and desperation and submits the thing and some made up answers to a big family conglomerate that is offering a huge prize of selecting an artist who gets to produce a whole lot of art for them in their various buildings. This is a big thing because it will literally make the chosen artist a new force majeure in New Zealand art. So Roz then goes to the family headquarters and impersonates Olivia - the looks thing isn't an issue, they resemble each other enough to get away with it. The big problem is that Roz likes to start smack and in one day and half, she stirs up a hornet's nest. Unfortunately, what Roz does is not what Olivia would do and it causes issues. Olivia is all set to rescind her submission, but when she calls she gets the vicious pit viper slimetoad that is the OW - who also used to be the H's fiancee- and the woman sets Olivia's back up so much that Olivia is now determined to go, just to irritate the pit viper slime blob. What Olivia walks into tho, is a hot mess of ruthless family manipulations, hellacious infighting and a lot of nasty back lash. To make things even more interesting, the man who rescued her from her meltdown and then rejected her is there too, he is the rebel son of the man who is sponsoring the big endowment. The H has his own issues. He was raised to take over the as the head of the family conglomerate, his domineering father went to great lengths to push and manipulate and force him into the mold he required. It worked for about ten years or so, the H did as he was bid and got engaged to the pit viper slime blob. But this H wanted something different and he has a cousin who is very close in age who really enjoys the cut and thrust of boardroom politics. So our H abdicated to the cousin and dumped the pit viper slime blob when he realized that she was essentially selling him out to his own father. The pit viper slime blob refused to slither off tho, she feels that the H's family owes her a position and living and she aims to get it. So she set her cap for the H's father. When that did not work, she got her self engaged to the H's cousin. However the relationship is rocky and the pit viper may be overplaying her hand - she also makes it a point to interfere with the H when ever she can, she has never forgiven him for dumping her betraying hiney. The H isn't too bothered tho. He farms and he sculpts and he has a good name in the art world. He also has a secret, he is the art critic that wrote the review that decimated Olivia. However, he feels that the h should have gone in a different direction, so he isn't too upset initially about what he wrote. So the set up is the h is staying at the H's family compound. We get lots of family politics and manipulations, the pit viper slime blob strikes out at random and the H starts to push and probe Olivia, he seems to want to spike something in her and it is uncomfortable at times. There is many discussions about art and interpretation and what makes talent and how it should be expressed. The H eventually figures out that it was the h's sister who showed up the first time, so just to make Olivia sweat a little, he asks her if she is a better artist than her sister was a lover. Olivia, who has a huge attraction for the H, is devastated - but the emotional spur does lead her to paint some more, tho how good the painting is will be left for later. Then the H explains that he did not sleep with her sister, they kissed, there was no mojo, they let it go. Olivia is still wary because the H is probing tender areas and she is determined to resist his Lurve Mojo Force. So there is a lot of little H pokes and prods towards the h that take some time to figure out. Essentially what it boils down to is this. The h's previous art had a lot of passion and sensuality that attracted the H. Then she was let down in love and she repressed her inner passion mojo. The H felt that was a betrayal because he was overwhelmingly in lust/obsession with Olivia and her new art did not reflect the passion that he felt should be there. So he got drunk, then he wrote this really scathing and humiliating review and he meant to go back and fix it later, but the copy editor got it before he could correct it and the thing got published and we start at the beginning with Olivia having a meltdown. Now he can't tell her what he did because he loves her and he is afraid she will reject him if she finds out the truth before he can snare her with the lurve club. (So we don't actually know if Olivia's new art was good or not. What we know is that the H is very much like his father when it comes to ruthless manipulation and that he wanted the h to focus her art in a certain way to meet his standard art ideal and now he is actively working towards that goal. He does realize that he has totally lost his objectivity about art now, so he does resign as the art critic, but it isn't enough to make him stop trying to manipulate Olivia.) As these things always go in HPlandia, the H and Olivia get stranded while hiking and the big passion lurve club blaze burns them both. The next day the H is hauled off by his cousin for some big meeting and Olivia gives the H's father the painting that she completed of him and the H's dad likes it. He tells off the pit viper when she makes nasty comments. The pit viper slime blob, sensing that her reign of vicious back stabbing is over, reveals that the H and the art critic are one and the same. Olivia has a HUGE ranty moment. She goes to the H's sculpture studio and she takes a hammer and she pounds his current work in progress to dust. (Probably it was better the sculpture than the H or the pit viper, homicide in HPlandia probably isn't pretty.) Then she takes off, once again heart broken, but now she has a righteous anger to fuel her passion and she does another art show. The H shows up to plead his case and while Hugh distracts him, Olivia grabs Roz and they flee to Olivia's apartment. Olivia is very ashamed of her outburst and her destruction, she has come to accept that she needs the passion to paint in her best style and her earlier departure was a bad interpretation for her. The H shows up at Olivia's later and knows it is Roz answering the door right away, he tells her to go away and then he does a fairly decent grovel to Olivia. He explains what happened, admits he lost the plot and shouldn't have written it and then proposes cause he is out of his head in love with her. The H is going to accept the chairmanship of the family corporate art program and if Olivia wants it, she can have the artist endowment. Olivia , who believes that the H's father set the whole thing up to build a bridge to his son, agrees to accept the endowment and the H and Olivia make wedding plans. The pit viper slime blob got shipped out and all is well and true love rules in SN's HPlandia once again. This one is very intense and a rather dense book, even tho it has the usual page count. SN did a good job in creating some very multi-faceted characters, tho they are not the most comfortable people to be around, they are very interesting. I also like the correlations between the h's illness at the start of the book and her art problems. Her 'passions' made her ill, so she repressed them. The H wants to let those passions out, so he stirs them, but really they have to do a lot delving to find the right happy medium. I am not sure I was buying the love, but I did buy the intensity and the passion, so it was overall a good HPlandia outing.