Product Description

Acclaimed author Karen White returns with the sequel to the national bestseller The House on Tradd Street.

Melanie has grown accustomed to renovating old houses, but she never imagined she'd have to renovate her own life to include her estranged mother. Ginnette Prioleau Middleton left Charleston thirty-five years ago. She's returned wanting to protect the daughter she's never really known after receiving an ominous premonition.

Melanie never wanted to see her mother again, but with some prodding from her partner, Jack Trenholm, she agrees-and begins to rebuild their relationship. Together Melanie and Ginnette buy back their old home. With their combined psychic abilities they expect to unearth some ghosts. But what they find is a vengeful dark spirit whose strength has been growing for decades. It will take unearthing long buried secrets to beat this demon and save what's left of Melanie's family...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9685 in Books
• Published on: 2009-11-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .85" h x 5.50" w x 8.25" l, 10.90 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780451227997
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
In White's less than exciting sequel to The House on Tradd Street, Melanie Middleton reprises her role as the Lowcountry realtor with psychic powers. This time out, she's enlisted to help her estranged mother, opera star Ginnette Prioleau Middleton, buy back her family's ancestral home. Ginnette fears Melanie's in danger from a supernatural force, and she plans to keep her daughter close, even though Melanie's long since written Ginnette off. Meanwhile, local hunk author Jack Trenholm again offers his investigative services to determine and neutralize the threat, and a nosy local reporter is intent on writing a story about Ginnette's return. Jack's attempts at intimacy with Melanie are generally rebuffed, and their relationship comes off as annoying background noise compared to the better-handled relationship between Melanie and Ginnette. It doesn't help that the ghostly doings develop at an excruciatingly slow pace, and the reporter's role (of course much more important than it first appears) takes too long to gel. Hopefully, White's next installment will regain the snap of her first outing. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Karen White is the award-winning author of eleven previous books, including the first in this series, The House on Tradd Street.

Customer Reviews

www.jennifervido.com
Melanie Middleton's life has been turned upside down. First, she inherited a historic home on Tradd Street in Charleston. Then, she met a most handsome rogue named Jack Trenholm who has a devilish way of getting under her skin. Now Ginnette Prioleau, the mother who abandoned her over thirty years ago, has come back into her life. If only she could turn back the clock to the simpler days when being Charleston's best real estate agent was her only concern.

Being a top-notch broker like Melanie has its advantages. She knows how to spot a true diamond in the rough, and she'll do whatever it takes to seal the deal. So naturally when her historic childhood home on Legare Street comes on the market, it's no surprise that the interested party wants her for representation. Unfortunately, the client just happens to be her estranged mother.

Putting her feelings of betrayal aside, Melanie chooses to help her mom buy the property back and even goes one step further by agreeing to spearhead the home's restoration project. As the walls start coming down, Melanie comes to realize that there is more to this project than meets the eye.

With the help of Jack and her mother, she soon discovers a menacing ghost seeking revenge against her family. With no other choice than to combine their sixth senses, Melanie and Ginnette prepare to fight the haunting figure that has threatened the Prioleau women for centuries. With Jack by their side, they dare to cross the forbidden boundary in an attempt to save their lives.

THE GIRL ON LEGARE STREET is the highly anticipated sequel to THE HOUSE ON TRADD STREET. Once again, White masterfully captures the essence of Charlestonian life in a haunting tale of betrayal, lust, and most importantly family honor. Through her vivid descriptions and spell-binding prose, she brings together the past with the present in a supernatural tale definitely worth the read.

Good
I received a copy of this book and was instantly intrigued by the premise. While I am not a huge fan of contemporary fiction (I much prefer chick lit), this book sounded very interesting. The Girl on Legare Street is actually a follow up to another book entitled The House on Tradd Street - which I have never read and frankly, I think would have helped me understand the backstory of Melanie - the main character of both books.

Nonetheless, I meet Melanie who has gone through some difficult times in The House on Tradd Street. As Melanie enters the second book in the series, she is trying to get her act together as well as her career as a real estate broker. Just as she thinks her life is back on track, she will come face to face with her long lost mother, who is back in town and wants to meet her as well as make a bid on their old "family" home a three story Georgian double-house. Although Melanie does not want to meet her mother, nor help her restore the house, her mother prevails - by telling Melanie that she has been having deadly visions of Melanie and they involve the house.

Working together, although reluctantly, mother and daughter will get to know each other despite each other and may have to come face to face with an evil spirit - who lives on the supernatural side (or maybe not?).

This book is a tad slow moving - kind of gets bogged down with too many details at one point, however, the book pace seriously picks up once we get into the house and our main characters end up face to face with a dark force.

The writing is good, but again, a little too detailed in some places. It also took me a while to connect with Ginette or Melanie - never quite certain about Ginette's true intentions and trusting nobody.

This book was good because of the paranormal aspect of it, which is weird, because usually that is the aspect that turns me off - but this was sufficiently creepy enough to keep me engaged.

Karen White at her best in her new read
In her new novel The Girl on Legare Street Karen White brings us back to Charleston to revisit the wonderful characters we first met in The House on Tradd Street and have the pleasure of meeting a few more. Where we find Melanie Middleton reunited with her mother who abandoned her when she was six, but if she thinks that's her biggest problem she's whistling Dixie.
Karen's love for the south, especially Charleston and it's wonderful historic homes really shines through in this her second of four books in her House on Tradd Street series. It's a haunting tale of fear and fearlessness of loss and love and redemption. Her story line/plot is not unique to anyone who's ever walked through an old building and felt the temperature drop or saw a hint of something that couldn't be explained, but she makes it uniquely her own with her twist of a classic ghost story. Her characters are endearing and funny and quirky and she knows them so intimately that you can feel the anal attentive qualities of Melanie and the sexual tension between her and her co-star, co-conspirator Jack Trenholm sexy author and amateur historic sleuth, you can feel the apprehension and tension she feels toward her mother and her feeling of abandonment. Her supporting characters are equally interesting from her best friend Sophie to her recovering alcoholic father, to her ghostly apparitions and all the rest. And they are all constantly breathing life into her story. Her amazing descriptive dialogue paints her words into pictures in our minds as she tells her tale. She will make you laugh and cry, empathize and sympathize with the various characters. She gives us the continuing non-relationship that our heroine Melanie and our hero Jack are too afraid to pursue and the sexual tension between them just about kills me. Knowing there are two more installments before completion makes me impatient for the next one, to not only see what lies ahead with the ghosts and hauntings, but also finding out what's in store for Melanie and Jack.
So be prepared to expel many emotions through this exciting and sometimes terrifying wonderful new novel. Be prepared to laugh and cry, hold your breath, bite your nails, to be haunted and sit on the edge of your seat as you turn the pages. And most of all be prepared to fall in love with the grand olde dame of the south, Charleston and with Karen's wonderful characters in her new book "The Girl on Legare Street". A must read for 2009. As mentioned this is the second book in a series, but holds up very well as a stand-a-lone read.