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Online Store - Run to Me
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List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $10.93
Your Save: $ 4.02 ( 27% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Bold Strokes Books
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781602820340
ISBN: 1602820341
Label: Bold Strokes Books
Manufacturer: Bold Strokes Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 184
Publication Date: 2008-10-14
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Studio: Bold Strokes Books
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Editorial Reviews:
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Burned by the four-letter word called love, the only thing Beth Standish wants to do is flee for--or maybe from--her life.
In the middle of the night Beth takes her favorite running shoes and a flyer for the upcoming San Francisco half-marathon, and drives to the City by the Bay. Hoping to escape the ruins of her relationship, Beth intends to run thirteen miles straight into San Francisco's famous fog. When an insightful woman named Alder Beckman comes to her rescue, Beth feels that maybe she's found the calm sanctuary she so desperately seeks. But Beth's calm is soon turned on its ear when she is pursued by an arousing and wild woman named Mary Walston, who has relationship ghosts of her own. It quickly becomes apparent that neither Alder or Mary intend to let Beth disappear into the fog that easily.
Will Beth be able to run fast enough to keep ahead of love, or will it overtake her in the home stretch?
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Confusion 101
Comment: In Lisa Girolami's second book, I was expecting something special and I got it. She shows promise as a talented new author in the genre. Being able to publish two quality books out of the gate is a good sign.
Here she brings us Beth Standish. At first, Beth is running for her life (or at least her sanity) after her life begins to fall apart. However, as the story comes to a close she's running to her future. Beth has left her home for a vacation of undetermined length. Her plan is to run in the San Francisco half-marathon, but she's otherwise unprepared for her stay in the Bay area. Purely by chance, she runs across information on a room for rent at a local home. After moving in, she begins to evaluate her life and what she truly wants to accomplish. She also meets the enigmatic Mary Walston - a woman with a questionable reputation who seems to have taken a real liking to Beth. They decide to train together for the last weeks leading to the race, thus giving them the opportunity to learn more about each other. In some ways, that's great. However, Beth isn't sure she's ready to accept what Mary has to offer.
Bottom Line - If you liked her first book, you're sure to love this one. If you're a runner, you'll like it even more. Great characters, great setting, great book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Steady, healing story about recovering from the bitter end of relationships by risking the start of a new one
Comment: I liked "Love on Location" by this author more. But this book was one that will slip effortlessly in among the average quality of lesbian romances, and likely charm those who pick it up.
The writing and editing was a little loose for me to give the book really high marks. Beth flees to San Francisco to train for its half-marathon after the abrupt and painful end of a 3-year relationship in LA. There she spontaneously rents a room from a quirky cast of characters and removed from her old life begins an emotional recovery process. She meets Mary, whom everyone loves and who seems to love everyone, and they strike immediate sparks, but Beth is wary of being cheated on, and Mary has been shying away from serious relationships for years. Determined to keep it casual, they begin to train for the race together, furiously attempting to resist all impulses to take their relationship deeper.
The reader spends the vast majority of the book inside Beth's head and thoughts. I like a rich internal voice, so that was good.
Except Beth had a tendency to think one thing one scene, then think something in direct opposition in the next. She'd make a decision, then ponder contradictory thoughts without referencing that decision. Perhaps the author meant to portray the disorganized jumble of one's thoughts as their mind and body war with one another, but it would have meant more if the tenor of the thoughts and contradictions had changed as Beth recovered. Instead she hashed and rehashed the same thoughts over and over, and they began to manifest in confusing actions, and also to be boring. I kept thinking, "Didn't we already go over this...more than once?" This led to the character repeatedly creating her own drama. Not something I generally enjoy.
Thankfully we also got a bit from Mary's point of view, which was usually clearer, and helped express the confusion this reader was feeling at Beth's mixed signals. There were sweet and hot moments as their relationship stuttered along. And despite Beth's clothes unaccountable disappearing in one such hot scene, it wasn't too hard to overlook the frustrating moments as the author brought her novel to a decent close, wrapping up events in a satisfying manner.
I liked the additional psychology the author brought to this book, compared to "Love on Location." She also shook up her formula a touch, which isn't a bad thing. So far I'm a fan. Hopefully she tightens up the characterizations a bit in her next work, but I'm interested to see what she does next. It's a solid, quick read, and I expect the vast majority of those who take the time to read this book will be entertained enough to consider it time well-spent.
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