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I discovered Judith McNaught exactly a year back. I live in India in a city called Pune, near Mumbai (Bombay). Last year I had gone to Bangalore for 2-3 days on work and had not taken anything to read with me. While visiting a bookshop there with a friend, I decided to pick up something new. When looking at authors that I had not read anything of, I came across Judith’s books. I read the blurb on the back cover of “Paradise” and decided to buy it. I started reading it that night after dinner and needless to say, I simply LOVED the book. In fact I liked it so much that by the time I got back to Pune, I had finished reading it – I was there on work, but I found myself staying up late every night so that I could read the book. I simply fell in love with Matt & Meredith…
I then shared the book with my mother and my sister. My mother reads a lot and maybe because she has read so much by now, she tends to be very critical and does not praise any work easily. But she too really liked Paradise and so did my sister.
I then read “Double Standards” and found it more like a Mills & Boon (or Harlequin in US) novel. It was only later when I discovered this forum that I could understand why – that it was written for Harlequin. Then I found “Someone to watch over me” – And loved that too.
After STWOM, I saw Judith’s regency period books, and I must tell you that I was rather reluctant to pick them up – I mean I had loved her contemporaries so much, I didn’t want to venture away and into a completely different time period… So I kept looking for more contemporaries but I couldn’t find any. In the mean time my sister had bought “Something Wonderful” which I borrowed from her. When I started reading it, I could not put it down! I just loved Alex and the way Jordan came to love her and could not think of his life without her!! And so I was completely hooked!!! Now I wanted to read all of the regency books too!!
At this point, I went all out looking for information on Judith’s books and going out and buying as many as I could find here in Indian book shops. I have now read all the regency period books (SW, AH, WML, OAA, UY – in that order).
In the contemporaries I have read –
“Perfect” – which in another one that I absolutely loved. I loved the way Julie kept trying to escape. Oh and I loved her even more when though she managed to escape she came back to save Zack…
“Remember When” – which I found rather disappointing…
“Night Whispers” – This was not available in book shops in India so I ordered this on the net…
I liked this too and simply loved Courtney.
Amongst the contemporaries I am yet to read “Every Breath you take” – its not available here in the book shops and I have just ordered it on the net.
And I am yet to read the short stories – eager to read Nicolas’s story – he was one my favorite characters – more in UY…
Oh and I have finally managed to find and read “Kingdom of Dreams” – it was absolutely amazing! And Royce is definitely my most favorite JM hero – I mean he was going to die for Jenny – he was actually going to die to keep the word he gave her!!!
Today I am an out and out JM fan – I just love the way she writes and I love the characters she portraits. And I love the descriptions and the emotion that’s there in the scenes and dialogs. Her heroes and heroines are so smart and intelligent. And they have an amazing sense of humor. And the supporting characters are wonderful too – so much so that you want to know their stories too. Another thing I really have loved is the way she has linked the stories to each other.
My sister and I find ourselves re-reading her books and even discussing the characters and situations…
The only thing that I don’t like is that JM has written only so much – I wish she had written many more books… But of course given a choice between having many books coming out on a regular basis like some other authors and having these few JM books that are so amazingly well written, I would go with few of JM books any day…
Oh and I LOVE this forum – I mean it has not been very active recently, but I have read the past posts and I really liked the topics, discussions and questions/ answers and comments. And its amazing to meet a group of people who have such wonderful taste in what they read!! :-) :-)
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