Customer Reviews
Narcissistic Survivors 
2008-06-17
Excellent writing with great word choices and phrases by Ms. Campbell. There were plenty of plots and sub-plots, although I was a bit disappointed because I figured out "whodunit" too easily (maybe I just got lucky).
I thought two of the main characters (Dana and Lexy) were overly self-involved, and that became weary early into the book. Dana's daughter, Bailey, is a special needs child, and, although it's clear Dana is a loving and devoted mother, throughout the book I felt as though she was ashamed of Bailey and/or that she was too filled with self-doubts and her own "history" to get past herself and move ahead the way mothers do when faced with their child's requirements. It's good both women found their way in the end...
As a writer, I liked Campbell's writing style very much but didn't like the two main female characters, and feel they were people I wouldn't like to know in real life. The men were well portrayed. Pork Chops and Applesauce: A Collection of Recipes and Reflections
Pulpy Orange 
2008-04-08
Dana Cabot is transformed from a happy wife and mother of a cognitively delayed child to a bitter woman the day her daughter Bailey, 7 is kidnapped. Prior to the girl's kidnapping, their weirdly named dog Moby Doby is hit by a van and threatening letters start arriving. The first question is who nearly hit the dog and who is sending out these sick missives?
According to Dana, Bailey is NOT autistic. One would have to concur as the girl's behavior does not support that diagnosis. Bailey, marginally verbal was described as stringing together random rhyming words; deliberately "sprinkling and spilling" powders; "airplaning" from room to room and having a mercurial temperament. She sounds as if she is cognitively delayed. A student at a local special school in San Diego, Bailey appears to be perfectly happy with the world as she knows it.
On a sunny May 29 in the early part of the 21st century, the Cabots' world changes. Bailey is kidnapped and a local task force is working diligently to find her. When she is returned home some 3 months later, she becomes mute and withdrawn. The hyperactive "airplaning" becomes a thing of the past and threatening notes appear literally in Dana's path.
The list of suspects is quite long. Bailey obviously knew her kidnapper as whoever took her taught her to bodysurf. After a lifetime fear of water, she becomes quite comfortable in it and can even swim. The question is who the kidnapper is. The list of suspects is the grandson of a neighbor who worked tirelessly to find her; a priest who happens to be Dana's best friend; a weird woman whose husband is on trial for child molestation and murder who is ensconsed in the Cabot house as David Cabot is representing the husband; a lover Dana had when she spent a vacation in Italy. Who, if any of these people had any part in Bailey's kidnapping? What happened during her 3-month absence?
Although I thought this was a well written, riveting read, there were parts that bothered me. I could not see why the Cabots would lodge the wife of a child molester/murderer suspect; the woman was cruel and one could only fear for the safety of her unborn child. A question in the mind of readers was if this woman could have had any part in Bailey's kidnapping. The real question is why any parent allow someone like that into their home. One could only fear for Bailey as well. The ugly and sordid nature of the alleged abuser David Cabot is defending and the accused man's wife provides an effective contrast to the idyllic descriptions of the flora in San Diego.
All in all, a good read. This is a good companion book to A Road Through the Mountains
Horrible 
2007-12-23
This book had so many different plot lines. I would start to get excited about one plot and then it would switch to something else. There were no surprises, everything was very predictable, and the end was so anti-climactic!!!! Hated it!!
Starts well but becomes too implausible 2007-06-09
BLOOD ORANGE has several intriguing story lines that never really convince the reader due to the unlikely choices the major characters make and several implausible coincidences. The central couple, David and Dana, do not seem like a realistic husband and wife. David is a former professional quarterback who is now a work obsessed defense attorney taking on the cases of repulsive criminals in order to provide for his wimpy wife and special needs daughter. Yet after his daughter is kidnapped and gone for several months and returned he inexplicably decides the "strange" wife of an obviously guilty child murderer should move in to their garage apartment. Dana is anxious and guilt ridden because of childhood trauma but when her husband sends her to Italy for a week to study art she immediately begins an affair with a troubled artist and has so much fun she never bothers to return the phone calls of her husband and daughter. There are more unbelievable plot twists and coincidences but I'll stop before giving anything else away. Campbell is a gifted word smith but plot and character development deficiencies keep BLOOD ORANGE from being the successful combination of legal thriller and intelligent chick lit she seems to have intended.
Could Have Been Better 2006-11-25
I found this book to be a bit slow. I didn't percieve it as a page turner and I could have lived without all the footbal analogies. However it was good because it keeps you wanting to know how things will end up. Not Bad
Glad I found this 
2006-08-17
It's hard for me to imagine why books like this appear to be so little known, when Blood Orange is just as good as novels such as The Lovely Bones or The Memory Keepers Daughter, which float to the top of the bestsellers list. I admit I never would have noticed it, either, if I hadn't seen it sitting on the book shelf at Target.
The story and the writing itself were the strongest points of Blood Orange for me. It's the kind of writing that just draws you in from the first page...something about the flow, the description, the use of metaphors just caught my attention and made me want to keep reading, and every time I said 'I only have time to read for five minutes', I found pages and pages flying by. The story itself was also good, an interesting, well developed premise for a novel with enough plot twists to keep this from turning into a 'let's all sit around and ponder life' kind of story, enough character development to keep it from turning into a shallow thriller.
The only thing I was a on the fence about (hence the 4 stars instead of 5) were some of the characters (Warning: I won't give away the ending, but some spoilers about events within the book ahead). The part about Marsha coming to live with them, for example, and possibly baby-sit? This is treated as a minor tiff between husband and wife when two pages before they were debating the likelihood of this woman being a child murderer/molester. I cannot imagine a mother acting as casually annoyed as Dana does here, or a father even suggesting this, especially when they never give any real reason as to why they would make this offer in the first place. The husband, David, is written as such a class-A jerk in some scenes (grinning for the press and thinking events related to his daughter's kidnaping will make great PR for his law firm, belittling his wife), and yet we're supposed to buy him as a good guy and family man. Even Dana did not seem really believable as a mother to me in places...when she almost walks out on her kid there is no conflict, no agonizing. Overall, page to page, the characters were well-written, but there were a few specific situations where I thought "What on earth?"
Overall, I really recommend this book. It's interesting and engaging - what a shame that it's not right up there with the Sue Millers and the Alice Hoffmans where it should be!
Didn't quite get it... 2006-07-03
Okay, I obviously missed something that other reviewers saw. I liked this book but I didn't love it. I didn't particularly connect with any of the characters. In fact, some of the characters seemed a little too contrived -- Marsha Fillmore seemed like she came right out of a John Grisham novel; Lexi was a little unbelievable as a 6-foot-tall, red-headed, former model/turned priest; and David seemed a little unbelievable as a former professional football player/turned trial lawyer. I could see perhaps any one of these people, but all of these in one setting? Seems a little unlikely to me. Either that, or my life is extremely un-colorful. (My friends and acquaintances seem to be more of the garden variety!) I also didn't care much for Dana who is the main character -- she seemed a little aloof and extremely selfish to me.
I did think the book was very well written, so I am giving it three stars. I just don't think it was the most believable.
Excellent! 2006-06-18
Blood Orange was one of the first books that I have read in a long time that I found almost faultless. The story interwove the lives of a struggling middle-class family with a parish priest, an abused woman, and chronically depressed man. The way the story flowed so beautifully with the characters all being something more than a cliché.
Dana, the main character, is married to a workaholic attorney husband who is still surprisingly compassionate and playful with his wife and his daughter, Bailey. She is far from perfect, but all of her faults are realistic. Real women (and men) are not without fault. They can be wonderfully sympathetic at times, and completely alienating at others. Blood Orange captures the essence of being human in the story.
The prose is fantastic with whimsical, poignant language that reaches right to your soul. It is simply a fabulous read that anyone can enjoy. Even the story moves rather slowly, filled with flashbacks to add to character development, you soak it up. When I first picked the book up, I thought it would focus more on Bailey's abduction and the process surrounding that. But, it is so much more than that. Pick it up. You'll enjoy it. Grade: A+.
Another Home Run by Dru Campbell 2006-04-20
Drucilla Campbell's _Blood Orange_ is essentially about two strikingly complex women, both complemented by a marvelous surround of characters of almost equal dramatic strength. The author's theme--a recurring one in her work/oeuvre--is the conflictual intensity found so frequently in today's families; especially, how couples, per se, find ingenious ways of coping with the myriad stresses that beset them. Ms. Campbell limns this hard-rock theme of relationships within the modern American "oikos" by creafting her characters' lives--and their often unbearably involving situations--with a lapidarian attention to basic human detail which results in a gut-wrenching realism.
Dana, the "heroine," has an impaired young daughter, Bailey , and a husband, David, who is a lawyer inadvertantly caught up in case of child abuse (murder?)--a happenstance which becomes a tangent of terror once their own daughter is abducted. The second woman is an Episcopal priest, herself beset by harrowing pressures of obligation and nerve-wracking quandries of friendship and vocation.
The author's prose is clean, her images imaginative, her narratives profoundly engaging. Ms. Campbell is a born storyteller; consequently, you cannot read her without becoming as enthralled, as personally involved in her story as if you were one of her characters!
And to read her is to be edified, not only about the exigencies of the modern human condition, but about all manner of places and things--for Drucilla Campbell is "quietly" erudite: she ranges far. Accordingly, in _Blood Orange_ we not only have ambient slices of San Diego (the book's essential setting), but choice vignettes of Florence and the Uffizi...plus an alluring array of commentary references to a great variety of en passant subjects: exotic cuisine, jazz genius Dejango Reinhart, au courant philosophical asides, you-name-it,and all for the reader's delectation.
I thoroughly distrust reviews which contain hypes like 'it's a page turner," or "If you plan to sleep tonight, don't pick up...," but I have to say that there is, on top of so much else, a thriller aspect about _Blood Orange_ that grips you immediately and holds you captivated till the very end.
_Blood Orange_ is every bit as good--in most cases exponentially better--than almost anything presently on the fiction top-10 lists. And the reason is simple: Drusilla Campbell can write. Really write. She is one of those rare authors who has managed to master her craft without forsaking the art of it--she is not afraid of daring creative sorties, risky riffs of language and imagination.
Summarily, if you want to know how American families live today, how they manage their anxieties and survive their crises--and want to be magna-entertained along the way--then by all means get a copy of this book...and when you're finished, you will undoubtedly keep it at hand on your bookshelf to read again one day.
--Reviewed by James Henry Brennan, Psychotherapist, New York City, April 20, 2006
Thoughtful and Interesting 2005-10-06
I liked this book very much. The characters are believable and I never felt stretched or distracted by any big impossibilities. Instead I was touched, entertained, and moved by the story and its messages. I'll read more of Drusilla's work!
