Customer Rating: Summary: The Gate House Comment: Nelson DeMille has written some of favorite books and some of my least favorite. I loved The Charm School and The Lion Game. My problem with The Gate House is John W. Sutter is too silly. I felt like I was reading about a child in an adult body. The plot was weak, but interesting. At 674 pages, it was too long for such a weak plot. Customer Rating: Summary: A Long, Long Trip to Nowhere Comment: This is a sequel that should never have been. The Gold Coast was a complex and intriguing novel and even so it felt a tad long and drawn out...so what made DeMille think we wanted to spend more time with these characters?
Unfortunately, DeMille is showing signs of the curse that afflicts many writers who are so fresh and vibrant at the start of their careers and then finding a trick or two that has appealed in the past end up using that trick to the point of novel abuse.
A good example of this was Wild Fire where continuing character John Corey has gone from entertaining and funny in his sarcastic asides and dialog to mind numbingly repetitious and downright annoying.
Notice I haven't said much about The Gate House plot? Besides the fact that there will be many stalwart reviewers who do excellent plot synopsis in these reviews, there also is not much point in it since the plot is wafer thin and is rather pointless anyway.
I simply pray the DeMille recaptures his earlier fire and does not descend down the dreadful path that the likes of James Patterson have. Customer Rating: Summary: Not DeMille's Best Work Comment: I listened to The Gate House on an audio book of CD's (19 of them). I have always enjoyed Nelson DeMille's style of writing, and I enjoyed this one, too. However, the language was atrocious. I am not a prude, but I don't enjoy hearing (or reading) the "F" word so frequently. I could understand that language from the Mafia characters like Anthony Bellarosa, but, to me, there was way too much from John Sutter. Customer Rating: Summary: great read Comment: neither my husband nor i could put this book down, it is very long, but still hated for it to end.... Customer Rating: Summary: Not just disappointing -- a truly AWFUL book! Comment: I have enjoyed all of Nelson DeMille's books, with the exception of "Plum Island", but "The Gatehouse" makes "Plum Island" look like fine literature, and "Plum" is just dreadful.
Repetitive, boring, lacking the good-natured humor of "The Gold Coast", "Gatehouse" is complete rip off -- page after page of the same drivel. There are two, maybe three, mildly amusing bon mots in the 600+ page tome, but that's it, and the ending is beyond appalling. (Yes, I read on until the end, hoping the story would improve. It didn't).
DeMille should be ashamed of himself. This garbage book is an insult to readers in general, but particularly to his fans. Save your money; it's not worth the paper it's printed on.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Nelson DeMille delivers the long-awaited follow-up to his classic novel The Gold Coast.
When John Sutter's aristocratic wife killed her mafia don lover, John left America and set out in his sailboat on a three-year journey around the world, eventually settling in London. Now, ten years later, he has come home to the Gold Coast, that stretch of land on the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America, to attend the imminent funeral of an old family servant. Taking up temporary residence in the gatehouse of Stanhope Hall, John finds himself living only a quarter of a mile from Susan who has also returned to Long Island. But Susan isn't the only person from John's past who has reemerged: Though Frank Bellarosa, infamous Mafia don and Susan's ex-lover, is long dead, his son, Anthony, is alive and well, and intent on two missions: Drawing John back into the violent world of the Bellarosa family, and exacting revenge on his father's murderer--Susan Sutter. At the same time, John and Susan's mutual attraction resurfaces and old passions begin to reignite, and John finds himself pulled deeper into a familiar web of seduction and betrayal. In THE GATE HOUSE, acclaimed author Nelson Demille brings us back to that fabled spot on the North Shore -- a place where past, present, and future collides with often unexpected results. (2008)
