The Great Escape
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4.1 • 19 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Perennial New York Times bestselling author Susan Elizabeth Phillips now provides her fans with The Great Escape from ordinary women’s romantic fiction, featuring some of Phillips's most adored characters, including Ted Beaudine and Lucy Jorik.
Lucy Jorik is a champ at not embarrassing her family—not surprising since her mother is one of the most famous women in the world. But now Lucy has done just that. Instead of saying "I do" to the most perfect man she's ever known, Lucy flees the church and hitches a ride on the back of a beat-up motorcycle with a rough-looking stranger who couldn't be more foreign to her privileged existence. At his beach house on a Great Lakes island, Lucy hopes to find a new direction . . . and unlock the secrets of a man who reveals nothing about himself. But as the hot summer days unfold amid scented breezes and sudden storms, she discovers a passion that could change her life forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Phillips (Call Me Irresistible) reintroduces Lucy Jorikin in this delightful, if initially somewhat slow, romance. As a former U.S. president's adopted daughter, Lucy feels the pressure to be perfect. But when Lucy runs out on the perfect man, Ted Beaudine, on the day of her wedding, she shows that she wants something else. Throwing caution to the wind, she accepts a ride on the back of a motorcycle from a menacing-looking stranger nicknamed "Panda." Lucy isn't quite ready to face her family, and the rest of the world, again, and her growing attraction to the grizzled biker just makes it easier to keep her real life on hold. After a secret about Panda comes out, however, Lucy realizes that escaping her too-perfect life will be harder than it seemed. Readers may be impatient during the beginning and unconvinced by aspects of the ending, but with two such hot leads, a few flaws can easily be overlooked.
Customer Reviews
I feel like I've read this before...
I wonder if anyone has ever noticed that all of Susan Elizabeth Phillips' books always feature the same cast of characters: an adult woman who is acting out due to a crazy life experience and a repressed childhood; a male protagonist who, depending on the plot is either a man with a heart of gold disguising himself as a bad boy or a good old boy with a hidden streak of bad that he allows no one else to see except for the woman who has caught his interest. Then there's usually a kid or two who's either been abandoned by both parents or is orphaned, suffering from body issues or was homeless at some point.
Oh, and Phillips' preferred method for getting boy and girl to meet are on the side of the road with the girl usually dressed oddly (a beaver costume; ill-fitting thrift store clothes that were purchased with the last of her savings and, in this case, a wedding dress are just some examples) as she's running away from her overwhelming problems with no plan or money to her name.
It's for these reasons that I normally approach her newest books with a small amount of trepidation and, I have to admit, a little bit of disinterest. Sometimes Phillips has a tendency to overboard in making her female leads assert their newfound independence and they end up with new personalities and in situations too far fetched to be believed. In almost every book of hers that I've read, the female character ends up doing a 180 personality change, convinced that this is actually the "real" her only to realize towards the end of the story that, well, no, the "real" her is actually a hybrid of both personalities.
Lately I find that Phillips' female characters are so forced; there's a goofiness about their personalities that I don't find appealing or natural. Lucy Jorik is a watered down imitation of Lucy Somerville from This Heart of Mine, right down to the way she dresses and the way she talks like a wannabe teenager ("That's so not true/funny"). The only difference between the two women is that Molly was a goofball screwup right from the start while Lucy manufactured her goofball persona. Molly, being the original prototype, had a more engaging and natural personality and her story was more emotional than Lucy.
While I didn't grow to love this book, I didn't hate it either, although I'm guessing that's more to do with a certain loyalty I still feel towards the author having read all of her earlier books. I just wish she could create more realistic, original and natural characters and plots in her future stories. There's no doubt that Phillips can tell a good story, but lately she's been telling the same story using the same people dressed differently.