Embrace in Motion

Like many heroines in the early pages of a lesbian romance, Sarah takes one look at Melissa and falls into a state of red-hot lust. Chapter 1 of this book is steamy stuff! A short time later, Sarah and Melissa are settling in together to start a new life. Most writers might have tossed in some sort of external pressure to hold my interest for the remaining 90% of the book. There are writers who just repeat that first 10% over and over (along with professions of love and "gosh, she's so beautiful" every other sentence) until I want to slit my wrists. But Karin Kallmaker is one of the best writers we are lucky enough to have writing in the romance genre. After throughly satisfyiny my appetite for steamy sex, she tells a very real, romantic story of Sarah realizing that Ms. Right Now might not be Ms. Right after all. This is a mature, engrossing story, with plenty of laughs and KK's signature grand wit. No car chases or evil-doers, just fun women I'd love to call my friends. I've read this book several times now and lent it out over an dover -- glad to see it back in print as my copy is starting to fray. Every time I finish I heave a huge sigh of pure satisfaction. It's not her steamiest romance, or her most complex, or even her funniest. Like Goldilocks, all I can say is that it is JUST RIGHT.

In general, you can always count on Kallmaker to provide a solid plot and believable, likeable characters, but the characterizations in Embrace in Motion are especially well-crafted. Unlike all too many authors in this genre, Kallmaker doesn't skimp on pages -- she takes the time to flesh out both main and minor characters and to create a persuasive setting for them to play out their drama. Scene by scene, Kallmaker deftly constructs two separate but overlapping relationships -- between Sarah and her lover, Melissa, and between Sarah and her boss Leslie. The rapid crescendo and subsequent disintegration of the lust-fogged mismatch with Melissa contrasts almost painfully with Sarah's gradually deepening friendship with Leslie, a woman of substance and depth. Fortunately, however, Kallmaker maintains a crucial authorial restraint that portrays Sarah as misdirected rather than pathologically masochistic in her choice of lovers. Sarah's involvement with the younger Melissa provides all the erotic heat one could reasonably ask for in a romance novel, but the emotional impact of heart-felt love comes from the more mature Leslie and her wry resignation at falling in love with a woman just beyond her reach. If you've never read a Kallmaker romance novel, this is a great place to start!

In my highly enjoyable journey through Karin Kallmaker's novels, I find myself surprised by each one. Just when I think I know what to expect from her work, Kallmaker takes me some place else.In a romance novel I expect the sex to be great. Sometimes, however, the emphasis on fabulous sex disappoints me -- at least intellectually -- because it takes so much more for a relationship to survive. Some writers expect me to believe that there's a happy-ever-after between two women who don't even like each other much, or haven't stayed out of bed long enough to know the basics about each other. That's never a problem with a Kallmaker novel and in Embrace in Motion she brings the message home with understated poignance. Sarah and Leslie find friendship based on their respect for each other and their differences, and sex isn't the be-all and end-all of the life they are beginning together. I was touched to tears by the final pages. More vividly than with any erotic scene of hers I've read so far, Kallmaker had me longing to be one of her characters, just holding hands with the woman I loved, looking forward together into a future that promises every dream fulfilled.

The last page of this book made me sigh -- I was so moved by the simplicity of their few words and the genuine love portrayed between them. It was refreshing to have the two main characters not tearing each other's clothes off every other page -- something I thought I'd never think! In fact, it was hot sex that got Sarah mistaking lust for Melissa for love and being so hurt she almost misses the real thing Leslie's offering right under her nose. I also liked that these women worked for a living, and their careers mattered to them. These women were the kind I'd like to work with or live next door to.

It's not the usual romance Kallmaker writes, and it's possibly not as intense as the rest in terms of "romance", but this one is the most realistic, day-to-day, down-to-earth romance she's written in my humble opinion. I like all her books because, while they can be actual love stories, they talk about that kind of romance you dream of experiencing yourself but never quite do (or do you? hehe..). Instead, this is the kind of story you most likely have lived or can live. I think this book has pretty good insights to social issues, politics, that make our lives extremelly complicated, when our lives could be very simple if we just followed our hearts a bit more often. Read it, and kiss goodbye to "political correctness".