Tom Barry (3)

This is not a genre that I have read much so I thought it would be nice to try something different. When the Siren Calls is an erotic romance book with substance. It follows Isobel, a woman who is unhappy with her marriage and is driven into the arms of Jay, a handsome (and married) businessman. This book alternates its point-of-view throughtout the book between the main characters. I felt that the point-of-view changes mostly added to the story. However at times it felt like there was too show more much going on. I felt like I would have rather just read about mainly the relationship between Isobel and Jay, or about the relationship between Jay and Lucy and not all the added drama between Jay and Andy. My favorite part of the book was Isobel's growth throughout the book. I really enjoyed the ending of the book and how everything unfolded. Overall I thought this was a good book but that it felt a bit busy at times. I would recommend this to friends and family.

[I received this book from a Librarything Member's Giveaway. The content of my review is in no way affected by that.] show less

This is a (long) review of “When the Siren Calls” which I received for no cost from the author. Sailors beware: ahead lie rocky shoals in the form of spoilers galore, populated by numerous outwardly beautiful (but inwardly ugly) sirens of both sexes.

The female protagonist in this well written tale is Isobel, a beautiful, restless, and somewhat neglected woman sailing the dead calm waters of an unfulfilling and largely loveless marriage. She yearns for adventure and romance, seemingly show more unaware that she is yet another spoiled trophy wife unconsciously seeking to free herself from her well-gilded cage. Upset with her husband, Isobel acts recklessly, venturing into an unfamiliar area unescorted, and finds herself a damsel in distress in an exotic location. She is lured to supposed safety by a Marrakech marketplace vendor, only to face further dire circumstances at the hand of the vendor and his son. A dashing stranger, Jay, rescues her at the last moment and puts her in a cab headed back to her hotel.

Isobel's husband, Peter, a sulky workaholic businessman, continues in his usual manner on her return, largely ignoring her in favor of his cell phone and his international business clients. Fueled by feelings of guilt over her earlier tantrum and her attraction to her hunky rescuer in the marketplace, Isobel uncharacteristically initiates sex with Peter that night, however, as in most of their subsequent interactions, her husband does not take an active role, instead attaining his satisfaction only, while Isobel is left feeling, once more, disappointed and unsatisfied.

Jay soon reappears in front of Isobel and, working his charm and charisma, he senses he’s found someone ripe for the picking. Although months pass until they next meet, Isobel has definitely been enticed by Jay’s siren song. Isobel’s worldly friend, Maria, an exuberant trophy wife with a boy-toy on the side, encourages Isobel to act on her fantasy of an affair with Jay, providing Isobel with tips on how to go about doing so. Despite half-hearted misgivings, Isobel plots to place herself in Jay’s path by looking for vacation property in Tuscany. With the quagmire of the financial hole into which Jay has dug himself pressing in on him, Jay graciously provides Isobel with an “out” at the brink of their affair, but she puts aside her fears and does not take it. After their first intercourse, Jay asks if she climaxed. (Why did he not work at enough foreplay to ensure this, so he wouldn't have to ask?) After reluctantly admitting her disappointment, he demands her promise to not fake it with him, then he finally brings her to shudder. Although a married woman, Isobel is somewhat shy and almost virginal acting at first (her husband had been much less than adventuresome with her in their past lovemaking), but with Jay’s encouragement and seductions, Isobel soon becomes bolder and more demanding, as Jay soon learns when she shows up at his office unexpectedly, bra-less, but wearing a tight skirt with garters and shear white stockings.

Jay, however, is feeling somewhat trapped in the clutches of another siren--his mistress of two years, Lucy, a flight attendant with a much less-sophisticated boyfriend on the side. (Are we sensing a pattern here?) It is in Jay’s interactions with Lucy, as she tries to ensnare him permanently (spurred on by her bitter man-hating friend, Tessa), that we really begin to see that Jay is not the shining knight that Isobel imagines. Coerced by potential drama inflicted by Lucy at a function attended by his wife and twin sons, Jay reluctantly agrees to break prior plans with his family in order to accompany Lucy at a wedding. That weekend, Isobel begs to meet with Jay in London and, despite his prior promise to take Lucy on the town, he gives in, but with a close eye on the clock while with Isobel. Shortly after Isobel asks if he has any other women in his life besides his wife, Jay cuts their afternoon lovemaking session short, claiming he had to catch a flight, leaving Isobel alone in his room at the Savoy. He rushes away, but not to the airport. Instead, Jay intercepts Lucy and, at another hotel, they spend the evening having sex involving handcuffs and yogurt. Later the same night, he takes Lucy to an exclusive club where he is well known, which is actually a brothel run by Eva. There Jay encourages Lucy into receiving a lap dance from sexy Camilla, then inveigles Lucy into a three-way with himself and a non-English speaking 18 year-old prostitute. (Unbelievably, this is all in one day and occurs without a single mention of condoms.) At the airport the next day, Isobel is crushed when she sees Jay acting chummy with Lucy.

With Tessa’s whisperings in her ear, Lucy further plots to entrap Jay to do her bidding, with the ultimate goal being his divorce and a subsequent marriage to her, while Jay plots to end his affair with Lucy. Jay and two of his close business colleagues get Lucy drunk in a club, then leave her passed out on the couch of the male colleague, Eamon. While unconscious, Lucy is raped by Eamon, but when she awakens the next morning to find a sticky bodily substance on her face, together with a fleeting memory of pulling Eamon to herself while he pumps her, she is convinced it was consensual and is unsure if others were also involved in the act. After Lucy confesses her feelings of guilt and sorrow over the matter, with only a very slight pang of regret, Jay then tells her he needs space and time to think about things. (Jay is unaware at this point that Isobel, while stalking him with Maria, had met and felt sorry for the drunken Lucy in the club’s restroom the night before, then had observed Jay drop off Lucy at Eamon’s.)

Jay also played his siren song for his former college roommate, Andy, now a married businessman, luring him into becoming the major investor in the construction of an ill-fated time-share resort in Tuscany. At first, Jay wines and dines Andy, as well as enticing him to partake of the temptations in Eva’s brothel. Jay relies on Eamon to lure British vacationers and retirees into buying over-priced time-share apartments in the resort development, using lies about expected rentals of the apartments, but the investment returns have no hope of materializing for those poor suckers. Jay is also assisted in his business endeavors by Gina, another sexy young thing, and Jay very briefly falls for Gina’s siren song, working in an evening with her between encounters with Isobel and Lucy. Jay demonstrates disregard for others by placing Andy in the position of fall guy in the business venture, which as Jay well knows, was doomed to failure from the start due to lack of proper licenses and permits.

During the course of her affair, Isobel and Andy buy one of the time share units and, at Isobel’s encouragement, they consider purchase of a suite from Andy. Peter and Andy also discuss investment in the development itself and, after having lost his position in business, Peter sets about to investigate Andy and Jay’s Tuscany enterprise. In business meetings at which Isobel is also present, Peter proves himself a shrewd and aggressive business man, causing Isobel to again feel a spark of attraction for him. It's too little, too late for the two of them, however, as Peter is well into his own mid-life crisis, with all signs pointing to his having fallen for the siren song of his own attractive and very attentive young assistant, Rachel. (Another pattern?)

Peter and Isobel begin to suspect that the time-share development is in financial straits and Peter orders Isobel to return to Tuscany, and back into Jay’s path, to gather further data and ammunition for his investigations. Despite her awareness of Jay’s duplicity, she once again falls under his spell and into bed with Jay, and it is during this episode that Jay tells Isobel he loves her, a feeling which she is now, knowing what she does, unable to reciprocate.

In the end, Jay gets his comeuppance when Peter and others join forces to bring Jay’s shady and illegal business dealings to light, as well as blocking Jay’s plans for a music venture of some kind which he had hoped would bring an end to his financial woes. Immediately afterwards, Isobel allows Jay to embrace her and she returns his gift of a gold necklace, thus providing her on-looking husband with proof of their rumored affair. Peter immediately forgives Isobel, but, claiming to have found herself, she opts instead for freedom for herself, as well as Peter, admitting they both deserved better. Meanwhile, the conniving Lucy, now with a diamond on her finger, is making a phone call....

Now, on to some of the things that bothered me about this story: Every main character had at least one other affair on the side and none of them seemed to have much in the way of redeeming qualities, especially fidelity, loyalty and trustworthiness. Isobel and Lucy both came across as selfish, spoiled, and gullible, with both of them being heavily influenced by the bad advice of their respective and worldly friends, Maria and Tessa. Discussions between the women also did not ring true to life and Isobel’s supposed transformation seriously lacked the introspection and insight needed to make it come across as real. Also, throughout the whole book, only ONE single, solitary condom was mentioned (by Lucy, of all characters), despite all the extramarital affairs and sexual encounters going on between the characters, including acts with prostitutes.

The anti-hero, Jay, while charming in his encounters with Isobel, was an arrogant, manipulative, and selfish user. He had brief moments where he appeared to care for others, but these were few and fleeting. Also, there was too much discussion of the intricacies of Jay’s doomed business venture in the first half of the book (boring!) and I almost gave up on finishing the story several times towards the middle. It wasn’t until the last half of the book that my interest was again captured, wondering what immoral behavior or trait would next be revealed by the characters.

In the end, I think the book itself was a siren. Like a siren song, I found myself lured in by the book’s description, then held captive until the (mostly) disastrous end. Despite my largely negative feelings towards the characters, I find myself looking forward to the next book in the series in order to quench my desire to know if, deep down inside, any of the characters did actually have any redeeming qualities and if Jay can indeed be saved from financial ruin, as well as from himself. show less

In Tom Barry’s novel When the Siren Calls, we’re introduced to Jay Brooke, a wheeler-dealer real estate manipulator with a smooth line for hooking naïve investors and a fatal attraction to women. Working an iffy time-share deal in Tuscany, Jay meets Isobel Roberts, a frustrated woman married to a workaholic, and seeking meaning in her life. As these two planets orbit closer and closer to each other, circumstances conspire to cause perturbations in both lives.
Lucy has her sights on Jay, show more and has hooks in him. The time-share deal, which he has drawn his friend Andy into, is in danger of coming apart at the seams, and Jay finds himself painted not so neatly into a corner; with no apparent escape.
Suspenseful, touching, erotic; all are adjectives that aptly describe Barry’s handling of this novel that defies neat categorization. The author’s familiarity with the setting is apparent in every scene, and he uses setting extremely well to establish mood. The characters in When the Siren Calls are a troupe of complex, flawed creatures, driven by greed, loneliness, the desire for revenge, but most importantly, by the need to be noticed.
Though not a mystery, this is a page-turner that I is guaranteed to keep you up late. It has humor, suspense, and will keep you reading until the last page; and then, salivating for more. show less

Isobel is a wealthy and beautiful woman who is emotionally neglected by her successful workaholic husband. At a point in her life when she realizes that there must be something more, she meets Jay and is instantly attracted to him. Jay is married and also has a very cunning mistress who is trying to keep him from breaking up with her. Jay convinces Isobel and her husband to invest in a timeshare which he is managing and selling, and which he convinced an old college friend to become the show more major investor. We as the reader are soon faced with the questions: What does Isobel really want? Is Jay merely a good salesman trying to seduce for either sex or money?

I thought that this book was very well written. The dialog rang true and there were descriptive passages, but not enough to overwhelm the reader. I felt that there was enough action in the book that certainly kept you turning the pages to see what would happen next. I'm usually a good judge of where the plot is headed, but I must admit, this one kept me guessing right up to the very end.

The author was able to get inside Isobel's head and accurately portray the emotional turmoil that a woman would have in the circumstances. It was amazing that he was able to capture female emotions so well, and I am willing to bet that there are a lot of women out there who may recognize themselves in Isobel. For most women, I think Isobel will be easy to identify with, despite her wealth and beauty.

I honestly have not figured out if I was actually rooting for Jay or against him with all of the problems that he created for himself - Isobel, the timeshare, his mistress...At times the author portrayed him as being genuine but out for all he could get, and at other times just a heartless scumbag! I believe he is followed in the sequel, so I have not made up my mind whether I am going to read it or not.

There were some seduction and sexual scenes and they were very tastefully written, but this is still an adult book.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys this genre because it is very well written and keeps you on the edge of your seat.

I was given this book through the LibraryThing Member Giveaway in exchange for an honest review. show less