Lara Cameron is a famous powerful wealthy New York building developer who struggled from brutal poverty in Glace Bay, a banker who took her body as part of her first deal, to Chicago, banker Keller whose love she takes lightly for granted. As her skyscrapers and boutique hotels tower on earth, she is at the top of a male dominated field. She lies and cheats to close a deal, making cruel enemies. She is forty, beautiful, glamorous, insecure, ruthless, vulnerable, secretly generous, rich - and still wants more. She marries an international concert pianist, the Lochinvar of her childhood dreams, but someone puts him in the hospital and threatens to take down her empire. ( )

OK, I guess. Don't know of any other novels to tackle the S&L crisis. The biggest problem with the book is that none of the characters are very likable. We can understand why they behave as they do, but they're all mostly pretty selfish. Maybe that's realistic for the worlds in which they inhabit, but it's hard to really get into a book in which you can't root for anyone. ( )

OK, I guess. Don't know of any other novels to tackle the S&L crisis. The biggest problem with the book is that none of the characters are very likable. We can understand why they behave as they do, but they're all mostly pretty selfish. Maybe that's realistic for the worlds in which they inhabit, but it's hard to really get into a book in which you can't root for anyone. ( )

This one's about Lara Cameron and her rags to riches rise to power as a real estate aficionado (similar to that of Kate Blackwell in Master of the Game unfortunately). Her mother and twin are dead. Her father's poor. She learns to do whatever she can to survive, sex or not. Once she stumbles into the world of real estate she leaves her native Nova Scotia and moves to Chicago, becoming one of the country's most successful real estate magnets. Then she meets Phillip, a man that's in the arts who shows her the finer things in life aren't getting over on somebody or something. And it doesn't last long as sins from Lara's past threaten to take her down permanently.

This is okay. Another one and doner.

( )

The story was soo realistic and shady at the same time that it made me sick ( )