My rating: 5 of 5 stars

3rd attempt at an audiobook which once again I failed miserably😢😢😢, so went back to my eBook. I read somewhere that the trick to improve your concentration while listening to an audiobook is to repeatedly trying it. So, this was my attempt at listening to Victor Slezak, who I should say has done a wonderful job, narrating ENVY one of my all-time favorite Sandra Brown novel.

Recently in an interview Sandra Brown had talked about how much the concept of masochism has been beaten down and that men in our culture have been emasculated to the point that they are afraid to face their own shadows. But it is quite ironical that readers still enjoy the knight in shining armor protecting the damsel in distress stories.

Envy was first published in 2001(Goodreads data). Most of SB books have the kind of heroes that readers fall in love with irrespective of the rude and offensive dialogues that are often uttered. Parker Evans is no different but what makes this story spectacular is that the whole game of revenge and justice is played out by a hero who is wheel-chair bound. The use of brains rather than brawn to gain the upper hand is so brilliantly done that one is left with a thunderstruck expression at the end of it all.

The relationship between Maris and her father is another loving touch, the affection just pouring out of the pages. Sandra brown is also amazingly proficient in creating sexual tension between her characters using the ‘see but don’t touch’ technique which has been evident in many of her books.

Parker says it best, “The Forbidden, the strongest sexual stimulant of all. What isn’t good for us. What we can’t have. What we want so badly we can taste but can’t touch”.

Even being aware of every twist in the story, I loved re-reading Envy so much that I now have to stop myself from binge reading all my favorite SB novels.

New York book editor Maris Matherly-Reed knows a best seller when she sees one – even if it is just a tantalizing partial manuscript submitted by a writer identified only as P.M.E., with the return address of an obscure island off the Georgia coast. Maris is intrigued enough to search for him.

Her trip to Georgia to meet the mysterious author takes her to an eerie, ruined cotton plantation, where Maris finds Parker Evans, a man confined to a wheelchair who carefully hides his past. Coaxing his novel from him chaper by chapter, Maris becomes caught up in his tale of two friends who rent a boat with a young woman for a night of sex and drinking. Only one person will return from that trip.

Disturbed about her sexual attraction to Parker and worried about her marriage to author and her co-publisher Noah Reed, Maris returns to New York, where the delivery of Parker’s newest chapters convince her they are more than fiction. She wonders how well she knows her husband and begins a harrowing search for a truth that ties back to a terrifying crime and a man who will use her, or anyone, to get his revenge.

This review is published in my blog https://rainnbooks.wordpress.com/; Amazon India, Goodreads, and Twitter.