Mr. and Miss Anonymous

by Fern Michaels

Novelist Michaels delivers a story about the unexpected turns in life that can pull people apart--and the twists of fate that bring them back together.

Genres: Romance, Fiction, Mystery, Chick Lit, Audiobook, Adult Fiction, Contemporary Romance

293 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Fern Michaels isn’t a person. I’m not sure she’s an entity either since an entity is something with separate existence. Fern Michaels® is what I DO. Me, Mary Ruth Kuczkir. Growing up in Hastings, Pennsylvania, I was called Ruth. I became Mary when I entered the business world where first names were the order of the day. To this day, family and friends call me Dink, a name my father gave me when I was born because according to him I was ‘a dinky little thing’ weighing in at four and a half pounds. However, I answer to Fern since people are more comfortable with a name they can pronounce.

As they say, the past is prologue. I grew up, got a job, got married, had five kids. When my youngest went off to Kindergarten, my husband told me to get off my ass and get a job. Those were his exact words. I didn’t know how to do anything except be a wife and mother. I was also a voracious reader having cut my teeth on The Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Cherry Ames and the like. The library was a magical place for me. It still is to this day. Rather than face the outside world with no skills, I decided to write a book. For some reason that didn’t intimidate me. As my husband said at the time, stupid is as stupid does. Guess what, I don’t have that husband any more. Guess what else! I wrote 99 books, most of them New York Times Best Sellers.

Moving right along here . . . Several years ago I left Ballantine Books, parted company with my agent, sold my house in New Jersey that I had lived in all my married life and in 1993 moved to South Carolina. I figured if I was going to go through trauma let it be all at one time. It was a breeze. The kids were all on their own at that point. The dump was a 300 year old plantation house that is listed in the National Registry that I remodeled. Today it is beyond belief as are the gardens and the equally old Angel Oaks that drip Spanish moss. Unfortunately, I could not get my ghost to relocate. This ghost has been documented by previous owners. Mary Margaret as we call her, is “a friendly”. She is also mischievous. It took me two weeks to figure out that she didn’t like my coffee cups. They would slide off the table or counter or else they’d break in the dishwasher. I bought red checkered ones. All are intact as of this writing. She moves pillows from one room to the other and she stops all the clocks in the house at 9:10 in the a.m. at least once a week. When the Azaleas are in bloom, and only then, I find blooms on my night stand. I have this glorious front porch and during the warm months I see my swing moving early in the morning when the air is still and again late in the day. She doesn’t spook the dogs. I always know when she’s around because the five of them line up and look like they’re at a tennis match. As of this writing we’re co-habiting nicely.

Most writers love what they do and I’m no exception. I love it when I get a germ of an idea and get it down on paper. I love breathing life into my characters. I love writing about women who persevere and prevail because that’s what I had to do to get to this point in time. It’s another way of saying it doesn’t matter where you’ve been, what matters is where you’re going and how you get there. The day I finally prevailed was the day I was inducted into the New Jersey Literary Hall of Fame. For me it was an awesome day and there are no words to describe it.
I’ve been telling stories and scribbling for 37 years. I hope I can continue for another 37 years. It wasn’t easy during some of those years. As I said, I had to persevere. My old Polish grandmother said something to me when I was little that I never forgot. She said when God is good to you, you have to give back. For a while I didn’t know how to do that. When I finally figured it out I set up The Fern Michaels® Foundation.

READ FERN MICHAELS' FULL BIOGRAPHY HERE: http://www.fernmichaels.com/biography/

Reviews

[Laurie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This could have been a good book if the writing hadn't been so awful and if some of the story elements had been reconsidered. The basic premise had a lot of potential, but the sentence structure was incredibly choppy and the dialogue was terrible. The same character would go on about something for several paragraphs in a row without interruption, then suddenly change the subject in the last sentence. Also, the characters used each other's names excessively. It's almost like the author had to keep reminding herself who was speaking to whom at each point in the story.

The jacket copy made it seem like this book would be more of a romance, but in reality the mystery/suspense elements of the plot were much more important than the romantic ones. I enjoy romantic suspense novels so the switch didn't bother me that much, but I do wish the romance between Pete and Lily had been better developed. The prologue outlines the single time Lily and Pete met when they were in college, so we know from the outset that they didn't know each other well back then. However, when they meet again 19 years later, the author tries to convince us that there was a lot more between them than there really was. For example, Lily miraculously knows details such as Pete's donor number, which I don't think he mentioned during their first meeting. Even if he did mention it, it's incredibly unrealistic to expect that Lily would remember such a tiny detail after nearly two decades had passed.

Pete and Lily decided that they were in love with each other WAY too quickly. When they meet up for the second time, they spend nearly every second focusing on finding Josh and figuring out the secrets behind the fertility clinic. They have almost no personal conversations at all, yet somehow within a couple of days Pete is telling Lily how much he loves her and asking her to give up her entire life to get married and move to Montana with him. Really? They know virtually nothing about each other and suddenly they're both going to walk away from their companies to move to Pete's ranch in Montana? It didn't make any sense to me at all. Aside from the speed of their courtship, Pete was such an arrogant egomaniac that I couldn't figure out what Lily could possibly see in him. Lily herself was an afterthought for much of the story; other than one short chapter in the beginning of the book, the story is told from Pete and Josh's perspectives, with occasional glimpses into what's going through Tessie's mind. Even though she was supposed to be the story's female lead, I really didn't get to know Lily well enough to understand her character.

The part of the story that featured Josh and the other children from the school was incredibly bothersome as well. First of all, Josh mentions several times that the Internet is his life. Why on earth would the people in charge of the human testing program allow the children to access the Internet? Wouldn't they want to keep the kids cut off from the world so they wouldn't be able to tell anyone what was going on at the school? Second, Josh knew way too much about the outside world for someone who had been so isolated from it. Sure, his teachers probably told him a lot, but he still should have found it a lot more difficult to get along outside of the school. Third, what was the author thinking when she decided that Josh should start talking to ghosts? I nearly quit reading right then and there because it was just so out of left field. I'm really not sure why I kept reading since we already knew who was behind the fertility clinic and that they were using the children as human lab rats. I guess I just couldn't stand the thought of not finishing what I had started. I should have saved myself the time and aggravation because the story only went downhill from there.

Overall, I would not recommend this book for anyone. Thank goodness I was able to find it at the library because I would feel incredibly ripped off if I had actually paid money to read it. I've read a few books by Fern Michaels in the past and don't remember them being so poorly written. Either it's time for her to retire or the other books I've read were so bad that I've blocked them out of my mind. In any event, I won't be picking up anything else of hers in the future.

[rivka · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

PG-rating-equivalent: Everything more than the merest kissing takes place "off camera", and though there is pre-marital sex, it is clear that they'll be getting married just as soon as the Horrifying Mystery is cleared up and they have enough time to put together a Spectacular Wedding Event.

A fun read, but chock-full of plot holes and stuff that makes you go "whuh?!"

SPOILERS BEGIN HERE

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Ok, so Pete and Lily both feel guilty about their donations. But really, the implication that EVERY donor did makes no sense. And neither does the degree of guilt before they know what's going on. Plenty of people donate sperm or eggs without the slightest twinge. Neither seems to be guilt-susceptible in general. So yeah, that didn't work for me.

But the biggest issues were with the whole we're-breeding-guinea-pigs scenario. In the US?!? And then doing what, using them as test subjects (with no signed waivers, and with underage subjects) and submitting the results to the FDA? Obviously that wouldn't work, so this must be before the "real" FDA tests . . . so HOW does this help them get back on top? And given the high rate of med-taking noncompliance among their subjects (at least 3 of about a dozen), not the most reliable studies, anyway.

Now, selling organs in black markets overseas, that I might have bought. ;)

Also, they both went from can't-pay-college-tuition to truly-SHOCKINGLY-rich? Oh, come ON. :P

And don't get me started on the ghosts.

[Leah · Rating 1 out of 5]

The description of the book is very misleading. It appears to be a love story, however, that is barely expanded in the book. Fern Michaels seemed to have had trouble deciding which type of book she wanted to write so she combined a love story, murder mystery, paternity case, ghost story and FBI story into one. I felt that none of the story lines were developed and pieces were just thrown together. Some characters did not have names and were called "the man", "the boy", and "the soccer player" until half way through the book. Poorly written, poorly descripted and one of the worst books I've ever read.

[Kristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the first book I've ever read by Fern Michaels because I've always considered her (and for several years I actually thought Fern was a man) to be an author for old ladies. I was delightfully suprised by how much I liked this plot. I could not always enjoy the plot, however, because I was so appalled by the atrocious dialogue. Seriously, I do not think dialogue could get more unrealistic than this! One character, who is supposed to be having a "conversation" would speak uninterrupted for paragraphs and the characters said each other's names every single time they would speak. It drove me crazy! That said, I'll probably read something by her again if my reading list runs short.

[Janno · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a painful read. The plot had potential but it took forever to fully develop and then everything resolved too quickly yet with many loose ends. The love stories were not believable.

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wasn't crazy about this one. I thought the couple's angst over their donations was too over the top. I don't think the relationsip/love story between Pete and Lily was ever developed satsfactorily. I knew more about the dog's emotions than I did about the main characters. And the ghost of Tom...I really don't think that was a good fit for this novel. I think this novel tried to be too many things..a romance, a suspense/thriller, and a paranormal and couldn't quite get any of them completely right!

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a great deal I did not like about this book but liked it enough to see it through to the end.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really got into this book super fast. The prologue had me but by Ch. One it REALLY had me wanting to see where we were now in these 2ppls lives. I HAD to take breaks since im mom to 4 but i started this upon stumbling onto a few new books today on sale thru a fb page i follow and despite being well into a number of books which is something very new to me as opposed to finishing one fully before moving on to another, the concept of this one had me starting it and ive no doubt ill b finishing it tonight. Ill let you know my opinon of how it plays out and the denoument but im really enjoying it and totally engrossed...so much that i wanted to share immediately! Im in Ch 4 FYI.
UPDATE FINISHED THE BOOK WHICH was a good read but the excitement peaked early then stayed at that level whih was decent but became less exciting as you got used to the story some of which was repetitive cat n mouse. I rate each book based on how much I liked it and how good it was for this particular genre. That said the characters are likable and living a bit of the great American dream for many of us so as long as you're not looking for the best book you've ever read this was a good read. I just wish they'd gone a bit more in depth in a number of parts of the whole including the budding romance which due to being so pg rated felt a bit surface. Again it was still an entertaining read even if I can't say it was perfect. Aside from the characters the topic was timely and interesting.

[Jean St.Amand · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why do so many authors feel it necessary to shove an unnecessary love story into a story? Peter and Lily met and spoke for literally 5 minutes 19 years earlier but after a day or two together they are the loves of each other's lives blah blah blah. The story idea was an interesting one that could have been better without that, and then Zolly and the reporter had to have THEIR love story added. Why? Josh was extremely naive because of his institutional upbringing...never being exposed to the ''real world''....I get that...however, it made NO sense that an old man he just met would be his ''adopted Grandfather", but his actual father...nope, he doesn't like him...at least until a couple of days later when he changed his mind and he was instant Dad from then on. Then to add two visible ghosts at the end...oy, why? Again, the story idea was a good one but there was too much nonsense added making a potential 4 only be a 2.

[Ahn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think that the concept of the plot and story was awesome but the writing was off and choppy. It did not flow together and, I did not know who's viewpoint was telling the story. it went back and forth, being in one characters head to the other persons head. The writing was not up to par. Naming of people wasn't good at all, some people were called a girl or a boy or maid then turned into her name. Not telling us her maid had a name. I really had high hopes for this book and it really spit in my face. Great concept but bad delivery.
I could not finish the book, because it was that bad. I love to read books and hope to one day write my own, and reading really bad ones aren't going to help. Maybe by a few examples of sentences or paragraphs but not novels. Too painful.

[Jenness · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to this one and it was enjoyable. Pete and Lily, two college students in need of money to pay their tuition, donate sperm and eggs at a fertility clinic to raise the money needed for them to finish college. The long term effects of such donations is not one I had given much thought to. But when they are reunited on a trip back to a college function many years later, they learn they are both having the same doubts and unsettled feelings about what they did in college. A love story of two people reunited after 18 years, along with the mystery of what happened to their sperm/eggs, and an unexplained shooting spree at a private school. All combine for an interesting story.

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most of the ratings seem low for this book, perhaps the readers have forgotten that fiction means taking an idea and weaving a story. Are the events possible? Yes and that is a bit frightening. Will it ever happen? Let's hope not or perhaps like the story the events have occurred and were hidden from the news.

Most of the characters in this story are alone and want to be part of a family. Those who have family members are dissatisfied with their relationships. Add to this a fertility clinic and a sperm bank and there are an infinite amount of possible results.

[Canan]

İlk olarak kitabın ismi ne alakaydı çözemedim...Hala aklımda deli sorular.Kitap genel olarak kendini okutan, kurgusu ilerleyen bir hikayeydi.
İçeriği ise beni düşündürmedi değil.Bu dünya da, sözde daha iyi amaçlar için, insanlık için bahanesine sığınıp, bir kaç kişiyi gözden çıkarmayı sorun etmeyen bir zihniyet var değil mi?Belki de dada beterleri var.Okuduğum bazı yerlerde içim sızlamadı değil.Çok karamsar yada karanlık bir kitap değildi.Aksine karakterleri renkliydi.
Ama eksikleri de vardı.Karakterlerin bir anda seni seviyorum moduna girmeleri beni pek tatmin etmedi.Aslında ortak bir geçmişlerinin olması, sadece ikisinin aylaştığı bir durumun olması bunu azıcık anlamamı sağlıyor ama yine de bana o hisler pek geçmedi.
Birde sonu var tabi.Olaylar havada kaldı diyemem ama çözülmemiş durumlar vardı.İnsanda seri olacakmış hissi uyandırıyor.Sanırım yazar o kısımları bizim hayal gücümüze bıraktı.
Onun dışında okumaktan keyif aldım diyebilirim.Orta karar bir kitaptı.Hikayesi biraz farklı ve merak uyandırdı diyebilirim.
Kısaca iki gencin okul yıllarında masraflarını karşılamak adına sperm-yumurtalık bağışı yapmaları...Ve aradan geçen onca zamanda, bunun psikolojik durumlarına yansımaları sonucu sonunda yeniden karşılaşmaları.Ve sonrasında gelişen olaylar...

[Christine O'Connor · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book because the plot was interesting but I have to give it two stars. The dialogue drove me insane! And I couldn’t figure out if this was a romance novel, a thriller or what!!

[Angie · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a terrible book! The plot line sounds good but good grief, it goes nowhere and takes forever to do it. Do not waste your time.

[Sue · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was bored the whole way through. I’ve read other books by this author and liked those. This one not so much. Read for November book club meeting.

[Barbara Daniels Dena · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of her best

Excellent storyline. Well thought out and presented. Gives the reader a pause for reflection on today's practices in this medical field.

[Shauna Freeman · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was excruciatingly difficult for me to get through. The plot sounds interesting enough and summary made it sound more like a love story, which turned out really not to be the case. I got frustrated with the constant running around, irrelevant storylines, and bad descriptions. There were so many parts describing in great detail what the dog was doing and I just wanted to skip forward. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE dogs and have one of my own but didn't understand or like how the dog was so humanized for no reason in this book, it seemed silly next to the seriousness matter of the main story. There was too much going on that didn't seem to work together between the silly character names (plain man, soccer player, large man, senator, etc), ghost conversations, human-dog, and technology that didn't seem believable even for a billionaire. How come a billionaire with a way to hack into FBI files has a flip phone by the way? Every character "snapped their phone shut" which irked me since they should all have smart phones (I know that's a silly gripe but it bothered me). I didn't feel much sense of closure at the end and felt like it was all rushed. Thank goodness this was a library check-out. I also got this as an audiobook and didn't feel the voices given to the characters matched their personalities.. AT ALL. Don't think I'll be reading or listening to another book by this author or audio book reader.

[Katie Kenig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so I didn't love this book. It went just a tiny bit too far with a little weirdness I couldn't reconcile.

Mr. and Miss. Anonymous is the tale of two donors - college students who make those extra few bucks they need to pay tuition by donating sperm and eggs to a fertility clinic near the Berkley campus. They both eschew the offered counseling, and find themselves suffering from terrible regrets twenty years later, when they run into one another at an airport while heading back to Berkley for a fundraising event. Their paths had only crossed briefly when they were students, but they never forgot one another. While in the airport, footage of a school shooting comes on the news and a child that looks remarkably like the gentleman donor is billed as an escapee of the melee.

The two set off to find out where there donations wound up, breaking all kinds of laws along the way, and track down the kid who looked so familiar on TV. Along the way they uncover a huge plethora of conspiracies, corrupt government officials, hitmen, scary old men, and ghosts.

Yeah, it was the ghosts, of all things, that bothered me. I couldn't figure out why they had to muddy the waters of my nice, neat little mystery novel.

It was an okay read, but nothing spectacular, and left me feeling a bit unsettled.

[Bridget · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an okay book. The story was interesting, but at times it seemed predictable and cliche. I actually listened to this one as an audio book and I think that skewed my idea of it. While it was fine to listen to, I didn't care for the voices the reader chose for the characters.

It was an interesting plot line - man donates sperm and then finds out 19 years later that there is a boy that looks like him involved in a school shooting. He does everything he can to try and find the boy and help - there's a lot of running around and near misses when trying to find him. The story started to get predictable and you could tell who was behind the shooting and all that had gone awry. There was a love story involved with the main character (Pete) and the second main character (Lily) but the story wasn't focused on that part of the story.

All in all, it was a decent book to listen to while traveling in the car, but I don't think I would have picked it up in book form.

[Grace · Rating 2 out of 5]

This really was not my type of book. I think that the author was trying to combine a thriller with a love story and it didn't really work, well it didn't for me. I have not read any books by the author before and was disappointed at her execution of the story. I thought the book was a good story but was spoilt by the way the author laid it out. I felt that if another author had the same story that they would probably make it a much better book. It felt a bit too convenient at times and in the end I just wanted to finish it. This wasn't a difficult book to read, however I didn't enjoy it as much I would have liked to.

The characters were alright, I just felt that the author should have decided whether she wanted to write a thriller or a love story. By combining both she left me as a reader dissatisfied.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was very excited to read this book; the storyline sounded really promising. College students Lily and Pete meet each other outside a sperm bank/fertility clinic where they have donated in order to pay for their college tuition. They meet again years later while on their way to their college reunion. Neither one has ever made peace with their donations since they both feel that something was sinister about the clinic. When they return to California, they decide to investigate the clinic and a recent school shooting that they believe is related. I thought the story was decent despite one character who gets advice from his dead friend (read: ghost). I was a little disappointed because I think Fern Michaels' books are usually better than this one.

[Melissa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dear Lord... Reading this book was like watching a train wreck... You just have to keep watching, no matter how horrible it is, because you have this morbid fascination as to how it is all going to turn out. It made me suffer horribly, until I decided that it must be some sort of cruel joke at which I must laugh at or not survive. I really don't know why I read the whole thing... But I did. It can have the 1 star rating simply because the idea of the book could have been a good one if it had been written properly... I mean, who talks like the characters in this book... Really... REALLY!?? And, and, why in the heck did I need to know about EVERYTHING the stupid dog was doing? Yikes.... so, so, so bad. Blech.

[Virginia Markhart · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another Fern Michaels. Hopefully, next time, I will remember that I do not care for her style of writing. This book was so hard to get through. Great plot, but very poorly written. I do not care for the "spirits" who talk with the main character. The last book by Fern Michaels had this same thing going on too. And starting another thought at the end of a paragraph is just awkward. Way too much unresolved. Really. Could a mass murder of children in a fertility clinic scam go without mass media attention...I don't think so. AWKWARD all the way through.

[Carol Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fern does it again!

Fern Michaels did it again. The title of the book was titillating and the story line lived up to and exceeded the title.
I never thought much about what happened in sperm banks or fertility clinics but Fern weaved a great story and encourage her readers to think about the end result of sperms and eggs.
I would like to know more about Lily and the other children. Did Lily find her children? Did PAK find more children?
What about a spin off, Fern?

[Dyanne · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was terrible!! The writing was so stiff that the theme from Dragnet kept going through my mind. I use to read Fern along time ago, but had not read any of her more resent books. Maybe I picked the wrong one to get back into reading her. Total waste of time. Thank god I took it out from the library and didn't waste any money on it.

[Melissa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was very disappointed in this book. The dialogue sounded as if it came straight from a soap opera. The plot started out as interesting, but as it went on it became less and less believable, and finally was full of holes and unanswered questions. The newspaper reporter and the bodyguard were the only interesting characters. I would like to have known more about their backgrounds.

[Kristi Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book keeps your interest. Lots of suspense with a romance after several years pass between 2 people who met back in college and have more in common then they ever knew.
This one is a page turner!

[Roxann Olsen · Rating 1 out of 5]

The writing was awful. The so called chemistry between characters was completely unrealistic. On a positive note the plot/story was the only thing that kept me reading.

[Judy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Two college kids, trying to pay for their senior year, make donations to a sperm bank and an egg clinic, seeming to help couples who cannot conceive. Years later, they run into each other at an airport while both of them are witnessing the aftermath of a massacre of children. She recognizes his voice, after 18 yrs. Both, now grown ups, have made wonderful and successful careers for themselves. One of the survivors who's on the run, looks exactly like our male lead, Patrick Kelly. He decides or has a very funny feeling that his sperm was mixed with some woman's egg and produced this fine looking young man. Patrick, who's a billionaire, is ready to retire after building up his company for the last 18 yrs., Lily has a successful children's clothing company. They decide, in pretty short fashion, that they are in love with each other and Lily will go along with just about anything Patrick wants to do. I won't go into too much detail, because any more would give away too much. While the story was good, some of the writing was not up to what I believe is a good writer's standard. Repeating a phrase or description: "the wizened man"...."the youngster"...." the big galoot/gorilla" time after time after time. And I'm sorry, but why does the man have to be more successful than the woman..."Lilly thought: I wasn't even in Patrick Kelly's league financially." I hope the next book that I choose is better written. Since writing this review, I've learned that the author has 200 million copies in print. I read because I can't write, but I want to read something that's good. This, however, was not it. Next time, I'll read the reviews before wasting my time. SPOILER ALERT:
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And can someone tell me what "2003" stands for? Our young man is named Josh Baer,(where does that name come from?) but goes by number 8446. Lily's donor number is 1114. What am I missing?