Publishers Weekly review of Rescuing Olivia!

Thanks for the tip from my fellow writer and FWA friend Chris Hamilton, who writes the FWA blog. Chris posted on my Facebook wall earlier to say nice things about my Publishers Weekly review; only thing is, I didn't even know I had a PW review yet!

In the words of Sally Field: "They like me, they really like me!" (PW was my only real negative review of Tell No Lies, so this review is extra special.)

Here it is:

"Rescuing Olivia Julie Compton. Minotaur, $25.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-312-37876-9

Compton’s intense, entertaining second novel involves a horrifying coverup and a powerful new drug. A hit-and-run motorcycle accident in a Florida forest leaves Olivia Mayfield in a coma in intensive care and her live-in boyfriend, 29-year-old Anders Erickson, feeling guilty. “I was going to ask her to marry me,” Anders confesses to Olivia’s sympathetic nurse. Was the theft of the couple’s helmets from their parked bikes shortly before the crash just a coincidence? Had a car really been following them, as Olivia suspected? Olivia’s father, Lawrence, a pharmaceutical magnate who blames Anders for the accident, informs Anders at one point that his daughter has died. When Lawrence turns out to have a hidden agenda, Anders travels to Clifton, Conn., where Olivia grew up, and later to Kenya in search of answers. While sometimes stretching the bounds of credibility, Compton (Tell No Lies) pulls off a super-satisfying resolution to this romantic thriller. (Feb.)"

My First Review of RESCUING OLIVIA!

And I couldn't be more pleased! The reviewer "got" it! :-D

"Modern-day fairy tale about a princely Florida lawn guy who must rescue his princess from a clutch of monsters.

"In the five months Anders Erickson has lived with Olivia Mayfield, he’s fallen ever more deeply in love with her and determined to propose marriage. But his plans are put on hold by a motorcycle trip to a special swimming hole at the edge of the Ocala National Forest that turns disastrous when someone steals his two helmets, someone runs his Harley off the road and sends its passengers to two different hospitals, and someone spirits off the comatose Olivia, tells Anders she’s died and expunges every record of her stay. The fact that these malefactors are three different people removes the tale from the realm of documentary reality and nudges it closer to fable. Yet once Olivia’s pharmaceutical-king father Lawrence and her ex-fiancé, Iraq war veteran Brent Campbell, are established as the lead dragons, Compton (Tell No Lies, 2008) burrows so deeply into Olivia’s and Anders’ troubled back stories and dramatizes in such psychologically compelling terms the swain’s attempt to rescue his princess—aided by his friends Lenny and Shel, complicated by Lenny’s ex-wife Crystal, a born siren—that the result is a pleasing hybrid of fairy tale and contemporary thriller.

"Anders’ road is a long one, and the twists along the way won’t keep you on the edge of your seat. But Compton’s increasingly pointed questions about what exactly it would mean to rescue Olivia make the journey worthwhile." Kirkus Reviews

RESCUING OLIVIA reading at Blog Talk Radio

Today (if my voice holds out) I'll be on Blog Talk Radio reading a scene from my upcoming novel, RESCUING OLIVIA. My slot is between 1:00 to 1:15 p.m. Central, 2:00 to 2:15 p.m. Eastern. Check it out!

Link to show.

Thanks to April Robins for hosting this!

(If you don't get a chance to listen today, the archives can be accessed through the link.)