The Stepmother by Diana Diamond

I thought that this book was OK.  I'm not sure if I would have read it knowing there was a court case in the book as I find those extremely tedious and I don't want to spend my leisure time stressing about it or even thinking about it.  This was, again, an extremely unlikely situation.  But those situations are appropriate in a novel I guess.  It's fiction, so why not enjoy it.  I wish the characters were a little more involved.  I would have liked to have been more attached to them and cared about them.  The book was entertaining though.  I read The First Wife and I found it very similar to The Stepmother in the various fantastic attempts on the heroin's life. Like the first book though, it was entertaining enough to keep reading. It wasn't as good as The First Wife though because, probably, of my dislike of court cases in novels.  That's so boring. I wish the characters were developed more and were more engaging. Instead of constantly relying on physical attempts of death on the person, I would like to see more moral angst. "Angst, often confused with anxiety, is a transcendent emotion in that it combines the unbearable anguish of life with the hopes of overcoming this seemingly impossible situation. Without the important element of hope, then the emotion is anxiety, not angst. Angst denotes the constant struggle one has with the burdens of life that weighs on the dispossessed and not knowing when the salvation will appear." Urban Dictionary online. (I know I'm not using proper anything in my blog, but no one reads it anyway!)
I would give this book a 7/10.

The First Wife by Diana Diamond

This was a surprisingly good book.  It could have been better in that it was somewhat predictable and tacky in the story line.  The pursued woman who just happens to marry a ridiculously good-looking, charming and unbelievably wealthy man while she has no real flaws as most humans.  Their sex life is perfect and they almost instantly fall in love and get married in (didn't check the timeline) a couple of months if that.  The couple also ends up perfectly happy in the end.  I suppose there were the unruly teenage step-children, but that didn't seem to affect the relationship as it would in real life.

The good part, and the part that I find surprising, is that the book held my attention. It was interesting in a lot of areas (to me anyway). I suppose it was the suspense (another thing though, that was unrealistic). It was interesting that Jane had an ex-husband who still tried to hang out at her house and it was nice to fantasize that prince charming would come along and rescue Jane at any time.  Jane was also portrayed as intelligent, independent, brave and resourceful. The unrealistic suspense situation involved multiple attempts on Jane's life in which any normal human being would have contacted the police and the surrounding human beings would have completely believed Jane when she tried to tell them her life was in danger.  In the book, no one believed her.  Her husband didn't believe her when Jane told him about a nurse, who wasn't really a nurse, tried to kill her in the hospital room.  She was also locked in a sauna in a temperature over 200 degrees.  Any person would have been alarmed by that, but no one in the novel seemed to be.

I did enjoy the book nevertheless.  I plan on reading all her other novels.  Fantasy is nice sometimes. I would give this book a 7/10