New York Times bestselling author Jude Deveraux uncovers the passions and scandals that take a small town by storm when two cousins switch lives.
Ariel and Sara never imagined their high-spirited attempt to step into each other's shoes would cause such upheaval. The lifelong pen pals, who look exactly alike, meet for the first time in their twenties and embark on a daring adventure of changing identities. Southern belle Ariel is determined to win the heart of a man who doesn't know she exists, while Sara yearns to leave behind her hardscrabble existence and taste the good life that fate has denied her. But in pretty Arundel, North Carolina, nothing is as it seems -- including the dangers that are closing in on their new dream lives, as the deepest of fears and darkest of secrets and betrayals come to light.
Jude Gilliam was born September 20, 1947 in Fairdale, Kentucky. She has a large extended family and is the elder sister of four brothers. She attended Murray State University and received a degree in Art. In 1967, Jude married and took her husband's surname of White, but four years later they divorced. For years, she worked as 5th-grade teacher.
She began writing in 1976, and published her first book, The Enchanted Land (1977) under the name Jude Deveraux. Following the publication of her first novel, she resigned her teaching position. Now, she is the author of 31 New York Times bestsellers.
Jude won readers' hearts with the epic Velvet series, which revolves around the lives of the Montgomery family's irresistible men. Jude's early books are set largely in 15th- and 16th-century England; in them her fierce, impassioned protagonists find themselves in the midst of blood feuds and wars. Her heroines are equally scrappy -- medieval Scarlett O'Haras who often have a low regard for the men who eventually win them over. They're fighters, certainly, but they're also beauties who are preoccupied with survival and family preservation.
Jude has also stepped outside her milieu, with mixed results. Her James River trilogy (River Lady, Lost Lady, and Counterfeit Lady) is set mostly in post-Revolution America; the popular, softer-edged Twin of Fire/Twin of Ice moves to 19th-century Colorado and introduces another hunky-man clan, the Taggerts.
Deveraux manages to evoke a strong and convincing atmosphere for each of her books, but her dialogue and characters are as familiar as a modern-day soap opera's. "Historicals seem to be all I'm capable of," Jude once said in an interview, referring to a now out-of-print attempt at contemporary fiction, 1982's Casa Grande. "I don't want to write family sagas or occult books, and I have no intention of again trying to ruin the contemporary market." Still, Jude did later attempt modern-day romances, such as the lighthearted High Tide (her first murder caper), the contemporary female friendship story The Summerhouse, and the time-traveling Knight in Shining Armor. In fact, with 2002's The Mulberry Tree, Deveraux seems to be getting more comfortable setting stories in the present, which is a good thing, since the fans she won with her historical books are eager to follow her into the future.
Jude married Claude White, who she later divorced in 1993. Around the same time she met Mohammed Montassir with whom she had a son, Sam Alexander Montassir, in 1997. On Oct. 6th, 2005, Sam died at the age of eight in a motorcycle accident.
Jude has lived in several countries and all over the United States. She currently lives in Charlotte, North Carolina and has an additional home in the medieval city of Badolato, Italy.
This novel was a little different than I expected. I read the first in the series and other than sharing the name of the town in North Carolina they were nothing alike. In Carolina Isle, Ariel and Sara are long lost cousins who look enough alike that they think they can switch lives. However this plot line only lasts for a small part of the book. The rest of the book is about them and the two men in their lives in King's Isle, which is a small island close to Arundel. The rest of the book was more about them trying to get off the island. There was romance which was cute but a little predictable. Overall, this book went fast for me and I did enjoy it.
Romantiskā līnija bija ar sarežģījumiem un beigās izrādās, ka tas, ko mēs vēlamies nav tas, ko mums vajag. Bija arī intrigas, dēka, piedzīvojumi, slepkavība, viss atpūtai un vieglai izklaidei pie jūras, kā jau bibliotekāre solīja.
Carolina Isle was a very, very weird book to me...
Let me explain. This book should not be advertised as "romance" or a story where cousins switch identities. I read the back of the book, which claimed Ms. Deveraux's novel was about Ariel and Sara switching their roles, and I read the actual book, which spent relatively no time on that at all! I think this would upset many people—myself included—to advertise it as such, when about 80% of the novel is actually of the mystery/thriller genre.
R.J. says himself that the switch of identities for the two women didn't last five minutes—and it really didn't.
I hated the beginning. It was unbelievable, boring, and bland. I expected it to be about a Carolina Isle—explaining the beauty of the ocean, giving a taste of classic love, and explaining Sara's connection to Arundel. But from Page 2 on, I realized that this book was nothing like the cover implies.
I will admit that I began to enjoy the novel as it went along. By the time the four member group made it to the titular Isle, I realized how hooked I was. Jude Deveraux isn't the best writer, but she definitely has skill, and I enjoyed the story. I loved the mystery, I loved wondering what was going on, but then again: I signed up to read this thinking it was about cousins switching places? Like a North Carolina version of The Parent Trap? Yeah, not what I expected.
Meanwhile character development did suffer quite a bit. I hated everyone until mid-novel, where I really, really enjoyed the relationship between R.J. and Sara. But in the end, everything ceases in a lightning-quick motion, and it was all completely predictable—unlike the story's main portion.
That being said, I almost put the book down at page 30. But I kept going and was pleasantly surprised that this book kept me focused long enough to finish it. The beginning deserved a meager star, but the middle boosted my rating. The ending though, let's just say...nothing.
This is the worst book I have ever read in my life. That this could be published is proof, I suppose, that anyone, anywhere can write any kind of drivel and have hope that someone will print it and sell it. The premise is ridiculous: 20-something-year-old diametrically-opposite-in- every-way (of course)cousins meet for the first time, discover they are identical-looking, swap places and fool the men in their lives into thinking they are each other. The plot is preposterous, ill-motivated and far-fetched on every single level: they travel to an island and are arrested first for killing an already dead dog and then for murdering a man and are detained indefinitely, falling in "love" along the way, etc. There is no reason to care about any of the characters--in fact they are pretty much all despicable.
I finished it only because I was trapped in a hospital room with nothing else to do for a few hours. It was like a train wreck. I could not tear myself away.
Not Deveraux's best work. Sara and Ariel are identical cousins who go to King's Isle with Sara's boss and the man Ariel's mother is trying to push her into marrying. The residents of King's Isle have a long-running scheme involving arresting tourists and not letting them off the island without paying a huge fine. However, the situation our quartet of protagonists find themselves in seems rather more sinister. The book is heavy on exposition, with a lot more "telling" than "showing". Even the action-y parts are heavily laced with backstory, and everyone in this book has tons of backstory. The plots and disguises of seemingly everyone on the island have to be unraveled, but the eventual revelations seem ridiculously simple and pat when it all comes out. The romance is barely developed between either couple, so it's good that both pairs have known each other for years and just had to realize they liked each other, which being put in a dangerous situation quickly revealed. So, yeah. Very disappointing. If you want to read a good Deveraux book...pick, seriously, any other one. Do you suppose she had a deadline? Or a ghostwriter?
This book was okay in the beginning - I was good with the hokey switcheroo that the cousins tried, but even happier that it didn't work (hard to get behind a male protagonist who's an idiot). The whole island mystery was fairly well told, with some nicely paced action through it. The romances of course seemed very rushed, since there were two within a very short book, but it helped that both were building on very established relationships. The worst part of the book was the end - OMG cheesetastic epilogue. Writing a movie in 8 months? Okay, sure. Getting it shopped around, shot, edited, aired, and winning an Emmy for it in four months? Puhleeeze. My brain exploded a little bit.
This one hit a little too close to home for me to be comfortable reading it. I grew up on the eastern seaboard and there was a town a bit to the north that had the same reputation as King's Isle, so I was perhaps unreasonably scared by what was happening. I got so agitated at several points that I had to put the book down. On the whole the story was good and I enjoyed it once I had finished. Finished is the key word here. The characters are interesting and fun, except for the treatment they initially get on King's Isle, plus you get two romances for the price of one.
WOW, this was a delicious book. So awesomely different but still connected to Arundel, North Carolina. So glad the couples got together in the end. No, I am not going to tell you who ended up with who.
After I read First Impressions I was excited to pick up this companion novel.
I liked First Impressions because I found it to be a well written, entertaining mystery, with endearing characters and a believable romance. Overall it was a solid beach read.
Yes, it was totally improbable, but that's a part of what made it so fun. You could tell Mrs Deveraux didn't take herself too seriously. It was fun to read, and you could tell she had fun writing it. I thought Carolina Isle would be similar.
Difference was like day and night.
The writing was blocky and hard to follow, the plot moves at a neck-breakingly fast pace, and the whole thing is laughably unbelievable. The mystery was intriguing, but so all over the place. It was really hard to follow and honestly I'm still not sure what happened. However...
Even though, it was kind of terrible, I really enjoyed it. It reminded me a lot of Dan Brown, without all the psuedo intellectual-pretentious-scholar-bullshit. And unlike any Dan Brown books, the awfulness of this book was kind of endearing and earnest in a way. I had a lot of fun blazing through the crazy stupid adventures and was sort of sad to see it end.
Carolina Isle gets two stars for being endearing and also kind of stupid.
I really enjoyed this *slightly weird* book. The concept of two cousins switching places was strange, I would have understood if they would have been twins, but who would mistake two people, however similar they may be?
The isle and its people were strange. Capturing people by fraiming them for something they did not do in order to get their money.
But for some reason, I really enjoyed the characters. Ariel being so much stornger than anyone gave her gredit for. Sara, the reasonable girl. R.J in love with Sara and David in love with Ariel. All in their own ways made me like them. And Gideon and the twins. It was slightly weird as I started with, but I did like it.
This book was a fun and light-hearted adventure. It suffers from the same flaw all Jude Deveraux's modern books do, which is uneven pacing. The book starts with great story, great characters, and a nicely detailed series of events. Then once the main plot reaches its climax, she rushes through about 3 pages of sudden explanations for everything and an action scene and ends the book abruptly with an epilogue explaining what happened later. There's always this feeling that the ending of the story was too rushed and not given the same level of storytelling that the rest of the novel received.
Really dreadful. I was in a bind- car went on the blink and I had to pick up a book to read while waiting, but twiddling my thumbs would have been better than this. I've actually read one or two by this author that were rather good, so I thought there might be a possibility. But no-- not only were the characters shallow and trite, but she hasn't a clue about what a Carolina sea island is like. Volcanoes? (even extinct ones) Rocks? Sorry babe- you blew it in my mind. Bleah.
Deveraux's books are just... unexpected. You read the synopsis and expect a cute light read, but they are not like that at all! I love it. There is unexpected mystery, murder, mayhem... Stories you'll remember for a long time!
Didn't love it. Took some mighty bizarre twists in the middle but simmered down a bit at the end so I made it through. Almost aborted reading it half way through.
Ummm BIZARRE. Not at all what I was expecting, especially from Jude, nonetheless I did enjoy it. Im going to have a hard time summarizing this very crazy book so stay with me. Sara and Ariel are cousins, but also identical (I don’t really know the science behind that) and they live completely different lives Ariel is a wealthy southern socialite with her entire life controlled by her mom, including who her fiancé is. Sara is a struggling actress in New York who works as a personal assistant for a rich businessman RJ. Ariel comes up with a plan to switch places with her cousin. Ariel is in love with Sara’s boss RJ after only meeting him once and wants to get to know him. Sara agrees and is excited to be able to spend time with David, who is Ariel’s fiancé to be. So they both want each other’s man lol. In order to switch places, they schedule RJ to visit Kings isle to see if he’s interested in buying the property. They then arrange for Ariel and David to be their tour guides. Sara and Ariel switch places for all of five minutes before the jig is up. Quite literally five minutes. They make it to the kings isle, which is known to have a spooky reputation but they still make the trip anyway. HERES WHERE IT GETS WEIRD. Turns out Kings isle is a very creepy town. They get off the ferry to discover no one is there. Freaked out they plan to leave, that is until they find a dead dog on the ground. Next thing you know the police show up and arrest the gang for ‘murdering Mr. Nesbitt’s dog’. They get thrown in jail and are told that RJ will be put on trial on Monday for his crimes. Turns out Kings Isle is a self governed society with hostile residents who hate outsiders. The town then shuns them and cuts off all of their communication to the outside world. They take their money and belongings leaving them to their own devices. They take lodging in Phyllis’s house, who’s been selected by the town to seduce RJ. That night while going to bed they discover old man Nesbitt’s dead body in their bathtub. They know that someone planted the body there in an attempt to get the outsiders in even more trouble, and they knew that the town would kill them if they were the ones to turn it in. So they put the body in the freezer and sneak out to try and find out who the real murderer is. Now throughout this whole ordeal, both Sara and Ariel begin to realize that the man they came with is better then the man they wanted. Sara finds her boss RJ to suddenly be way more appealing than David. And Ariel finds that RJ is not what she thought and that David is actually the perfect man for her. There’s a lot more to this including discovering lost treasure, ship wrecked orphaned kids, and an impromptu makeover salon. Really strange lol. This is nothing I expected from this book. The synopsis makes it seem like the whole story is about the twins switching lives, which is what I expected, when in reality the switch lasts like three pages. On top of that there was so many different plot holes and details that never got resolved. I honestly wouldn’t categorize this as a romance considering how much of the plot revolves around a mystery. In spite of all this I was actually extremely entertained and really enjoyed the book. I liked that it took a completely different route from normal Jude books. Sara and Ariel were adorable and so were their counterparts, RJ and David. The town was so creepy and I think Jude got the vibe 100% right, with the scary hillbilly townsfolk. Overall a good book lol.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Sometimes things just don’t work out. I have read many books by Jude Deveraux. When I saw this one at a yard sale I snapped it up. Paid fifty cents for it. I want my money back. Oh dear, where to begin. It was just painfully awful. I had trouble from the get go that did not get any better. In theory it could have been ok. Two look alike cousins who decided to change places. Kind of like Parent Trap. Did not work out for them for more that five minutes. But the story continued for a painful 397 pages. All of which I struggled through. I hate have OCD. Makes me unable to quit reading the dang thing until the very end. I did not like any of the characters. I guess every author is entitled to a bad book. I kept looking back at the front cover…Is this really a Jude Deveraux? Unfortunately, it was. Yikes.
On the premise let me put it out there that I used to like Jude Deveraux as an author and the romance stories that she wrote. The last two books from her have been a disappointment though. First Holly and now this one.
As someone already mentioned in their review, the book cover talks about cousins switching identities but was disappointed when that went nowhere. The book could be put under mystery reads, the romance part of it seems to have been added because the author is known to write this genre. It does have a happy ending, so there's that.
However, if you are looking to read a sisters switching each other's lives kinda story you could give Judith Michael's book Deceptions a try. I liked that a whole lot better when I'd read it long back.
Perfect beach read!! Meet Ariel and Sara — look-alike cousins who think they want another life. Both bored, they decide to switch places on a weekend trip to King’s Isle with Sara’s boss (whom she thinks she hates) and Ariel’s fiancé (whom she thinks she has no interest in). What awaits them on the island, off the coast of South Carolina, are mystery, secrets and danger that will test their relationships with both men. It’s a typical love story set in a mystery but well-written, fast-paced and lots of fun!!
This was a fun break from murder and mayhem. Yes, there was a murder here, but in such a light-hearted story, I was more concerned about the frozen food they took out of the freezer to make the body fit than about the corpse. The ending was too abrupt, with the equivalent of "they lived happily ever after." No explanation of the arrest of the bad guys, how they found Gideon's grandparents, whether R.J. kept Ariel's promises to Phyllis, or what effort they put into finding where the twins came from.
Tough to get invested in, and the plot of the story at the beginning is absolutely absurd. It's basically an adult version of The Parent Trap where cousins Ariel and Sara think they look enough alike to swap places and fool their parents, boyfriend, and boss. The majority of the story takes place on a creepy island in North Carolina, and everything that happens there is so frustrating to read that I almost gave up. Luckily, all's well that ends well (we always knew it would), but overall, I wouldn't recommend.
I love Jude Deveraux's stories, and this was no exception! The story grabbed my attention from the beginning, and I liked it enough to buy the ebook when I discovered that I could not borrow it from Overdrive (library app). The story had new elements that I have not read in other books by Jude, which was wonderful! You won't be sorry if you decide to read this!
Strange book with unusual characters. Is it a romance, a comedy, or a ... murder mystery? Cousins who look alike, decide to trade identities, so they can change their personal circumstances. Little do they know what they are getting into? Then, they travel to an island off the coast of North Carolina and run into a lot of trouble.
Although the story started out as a bland quite expected and cheesy love story. It had a surprising twist around the first corner. After a few chapters I felt I'm in one of Nancy Drew mysteries. Chasing gold, old islands, conspiracies, kidnap and murder! I loved every page of it, especially with her telltale sense of humor.
Very disappointing read. Initially there is so much confusion as to who is who when the ladies switch identities that it is difficult to know who is doing or saying what. Cavalier attitude about what happened to the poor dog and the abused children is not appreciated. I finished the book hoping it would redeem itself, but it was a forced, choppy ending.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
ジュード先生なのでオリジナルで予測不能で引き込まれて一気読み♡ First impressionsの2巻でWild Orchidsとも同じ町。他作品の方が出来が良いけど充分に面白かった😊 最初は『ふたごのロッテ』の大人版でロマンスや貧困の差がある感じとホノボノだったのが急にトワイライト・ゾーンの世界に入ってしまい、その後はミステリーサスペンスでハラハラしつつロマンスも。育ちが全然違うけど似てる従姉妹が入れ替わりの計画する所から始まります。現実忘れて型に嵌らない物語の世界に飛び込みたい人にお勧めの作者✨
This book was like a fun read. I thought it was a sequel to First Impressions but it wasn't. The only sequel was to the town of Arundel, North Carolina. The story was full of excitement after a slow beginning. The romances were unique. The mystery kept me reading. And who doesn't like a happy ending?