Reinventing the Woman.

Reinventing the Woman by Patty Rice Simon and Schuster, January 2001, $23.00, ISBN 0-684-85341-8

Lies, deceit, mystery and blackmail are some of the elements for a good novel. Throw in a crisis or two and it usually adds up to a bestseller. Rice has worked all of these elements into her new novel, but the story still falls flat.

The reader is introduced to Camille, a loveless woman who was ignored by her mother and father as a child and is currently a battered woman escaping from a violent, seven-year relationship. With nowhere to turn she moves in with her sister and takes time to reflect on her abusive relationship, the scars she was left by a bad relationship with her mother, and her troubled childhood. But while she's staying with her sister's, her mother returns and Camille begins to fall apart.

The book and starts out with great potential, but loses the reader along the way. Camille thinks she's on her way after she starts a job with a self-help guru, but her new boss turns out to be a key player in one of the major mysteries of her life. While coping with the family dramas, and leftover feelings from her last relationship, she meets a great man, but the relationship might be doomed from the start.

Unfortunately her love interest seemed to be the only positive person in the book, and poor Camille desperately needed much more. Reinventing the Woman does end with a twist, but it comes too late to save the story.

Erica Woods Tucker is a New York-based writer and reviewer.