Marianne Martin is a bodacious author! Sage Bristo is so enticing, alluring, HOT, HOT, HOT! - on paper no less! LEGACY left me breathless for more. Luckily I had NEVER ENDING readily available. YES! , I believe in love! And always will!

I'm looking for Sage Bristo!!!! I'm spoiled now. I am wishing I had a woman who would talk to me like that! Realistically, when I feel the need I guess I'll have to read Legacy again. First, though, I'm waiting impatiently to get my hands on the sequel Never Ending.

But to say only that Legacy of Love and the main character is sexy doesn't do the author justice. Marianne Martin is a fine writer and this book I hesitate to call merely a romance. Martin moves her readers quickly through a gamut of emotions with bright dialogue and just the right amount of tension. She has a writing style that keeps you reading hungrily and characters you won't forget.

I am about to devour her other two books, Love in the Balance and Dawn of the Dance, while I'm waiting. Marianne Martin is now at the top of my 'must read' list.

Yes, finally! A main character that's all of that-succesful, lesbian, and Native American! And not only that. She is developed in a wonderfully well-written tale of love. As a Native American I have suffered for years without a heroine I can claim. Martin has written me a treasure.

A don't miss book for readers who looking for a great love story. This one has it all - terrific characters, convoluted plot, nasty nemesis, and much more. The love scene is one of the most uniquely described and sophisticated that I have read - and it was still HOT! I couldn't ask for anything more. I highly recommend Never Ending.

Love, crisis, drama, history, and even a little humor - this book has it all. The P-Town chapter is right on, it felt like I was right there. Characters that will stay with you long after you've read it. Never Ending is going on my keeper shelf to be read again. This one gets my highest recommendation.

For once here is a sequel that really is. Never Ending is a look at the life and relationship of Sage and Deanne four years after Legacy of Love. Since Sage is not your average woman, neither are the challenges she brings to her relationship with Deanne.

Sage and her sister, Cimmie, are the last women of the Doe of childbearing age. When Cimmie's attempts at pregnancy fail, Sage is faced with the responsilbility of saving her clan from extinction. How she handles that affects more than the future of her clan. Deanne, in the process of chroniciling Sage's lineage, inadvertently breaches her lover's trust by contacting Sage's mother. The reaction she gets from both of them is just the tip of an iceberg she is not prepared for. Throw into the mix the temptation of an old lover, and Never Ending has enough twists and turns, and ups and downs to keep you turning the pages and guessing at what's going to happen next.

Marianne Martin does a fine job at the difficult task of writing a successful sequel. This is the second half of an exceptional story, full and well-developed. You'll even learn a little bit of Native American lore. A don't miss book from a fine author.

Marianne Martin's latest novel, "Mirrors", is the kind of literary prose that tenderly pulls at the strings of your heart and the deep recesses of your mind in regards to love, duty, and friendship. With her well-crafted ability to bring us into the very soul of her characters, Martin introduces us to Jean Carson; a special type of teacher that students look up to and who goes the extra mile to make a difference everyday in their lives. Jean's passion for her career and the stability of her life is upturned when she must face coming out after being in the comfort zone of a heterosexual marriage. Her struggle; a not so uncommon, yet life-altering one, is paralleled in the personal strife of a young, female student who is victimized from being seemingly different to her peers. Shayna Bradley is a confident, sharp lawyer with a sense of justice and a desire to help mothers and their children. Shayna is the kind of friend any woman would want in their back court, but when it comes to relationships work tends to run into over time and romance lingers on the sidelines. Despite this she is grounded in her loyalty to family and friends and drawn deeply to the needs of both. Intertwined by a cherished friendship and lined up together in the battle of conformity versus differentiation, Jean and Shayna must each view what is mirrored in the reflective pool of their hearts. Like soup, Ms Martin once again manages to warm the soul with a stirring, personal look at two women who share a similar consciousness. This is the type of good literature that delves deep, splinters and fragments into a thousand glass pieces for each reader to see a portion of themselves glimmering back from within its pages.

While reading MIRRORS, I found myself wondering; "Do I know these women? They could be my neighbors, my former teachers, the women at the next table in my favorite restaurant." The depth at which I got to know the characters made them as real as my own friends that I wish I could advise and console. And as with real friends, they followed their own sometimes surprising paths and drummed up courage I didn't know they had.
When I got this book as a gift, I wasn't thinking much past the generosity of the friend who gave it to me. After reading the book, though, I realized that the author also gave me a gift. That gift was the effort and painstaking attention to detail that Marianne Martin made in sharing these women with me. She put them in familiar territory and let me know that, often, my struggle with guilt, passion and courage is every woman's struggle. She reminded me that a rare, genuine friendship can survive the most uncertain and painful of situations, and that a soul mate will truly love you no matter how difficult you try to make it. We could all probably stand to be reminded of these things on occasion, and reading MIRRORS is by all accounts a great way to be reminded.

It's no wonder that Mirrors was nominated for a Lammy. Marianne Martin tackles so many issues that confront us all, guilt, commitment, concern, harassment, insecurity, religion, professionalism, and, of course, love. Mostly, Marianne Martin writes about the heroism that occurs in ordinary lives. Sound overwhelming? Not really because of the ease in which she imbues her characters with these human qualities and emotions.

Is this a Romance novel? You bet it is. Does it break the rules? It does so marvelously. Mirrors is the story of two professional women who find themselves more adept at doing the appropriate thing than finding the right thing within themselves. As with all romance novels, they fall in love, but that's when things really start to get complicated. As Bette Davis said in "All About Eve", "Fasten your seatbelts; we're in for a bumpy ride." And what a ride it is? Martin keeps us guessing as to the outcome of several situations up until the end. She also makes us, the reader, look into our own mirrors to view our own behaviors more clearly.

Tautly written, humanly portrayed, and realistically fraught, Martin's characters leap from the page to become your next-door neighbor or one's own niggling conscience. Just as easily, some of these characters could be drawn from today's headline news stories.

Buy this book. You'll be happy you did. It makes for an excellent read.

Marrianne Martin at her best. The characters were very well defined. They were folks that you would love to me in the flesh. I was very moved about the "Angel Singing" to Connie's mother.

Can't wait for the next book and many, many more.

Love in the balance is so much more than a romance. Marianne Martin has created characters I wish I could visit on a regular basis. At times they made me laugh out loud, and other times they made me cry. I worried so much about them that I couldn't put the book down.

The story is real and exceptionally well-drawn. It is a reminder of how wonderful love is, and the courage that it takes to live it. Don't miss this one.

Love in the Balance by Marianne Martin is my all-time favorite lesbian romance. I can't even count how many times I have read it or parts of it. The book was in shameful condition, dog-eared and stained with coffee, when I handed it to the author at a signing; but I wanted it signed. Ms Martin graciously smiled and told me it was the biggest compliment she had ever received. All I can say is that it is a compliment well deserved.

I am in so many ways like Connie Bradford, Ms. Martin could have been fictionalizing my story. I appreciate having the lesbian who has lived as a straight woman most of her life portrayed without the typical stereotyping. I am not confused or weak; I am not going to leave my relationship for a man. I am strong and confident, and committed to a woman partner. I thank Ms. Martin for letting the world know that lesbians like me exist.

As she does in each of her books, Ms Martin develops her characters with compassion and sensitivity. They are strong characters, trying to overcome their own shortcomings, sometimes with anger, sometimes with humor, but always with conviction. The plot is wonderfully atypical of lesbian romance, ripping events right from the newspaper headlines and demanding that the characters deal with them. Each time I read this book I come away with renewed courage and love (of course the love scenes have nothing to do with the latter).

I won't review the story itself since that has been done in other reviews, but I will add that I believe this is a story that will touch most reader's hearts. I highly recommend it.

This is a beautifully written book. One of my favorite lines is, "You give me mornings-after filled with the love you promised the night before." The description of each character unfolds along with the story, you feel the action and drama as it is happening. It is a story the reader feels and experiences with the characters instead of watching them play out each scene.

I really liked the action throughout, the characters are very active and show- up in many different locations. I especially enjoyed the way Ms. Martin crafted the attack chapter by keeping the reader moving back and forth from one charcater to the other. It kept me on edge.

After reading her other books, I am convinced that Marianne Martin is easily at the top of her genre. She writes exciting not sappy love stories that are filled with memorable characters, important lesbian issues, and delicious love scenes.

I highly recommend this book as well as Martin's trilogy, which includes Legacy of Love, Love in the Balance, and Never Ending. Martin is a "don't miss" author.

If you are a reader who wants to be drawn into a contemporary story of empowering, visceral love between two emotionally mature and complicated women,...You will not be disapointed but rather enraptured in the slow fall and the sustained dramatic rush between teacher and student, entrapped in a university setting in the midwest.
As always, Marianne K. Martin weaves within the love story, contemporary issues and obstacles that lesbian women face when their love in this scenario is threatened by the archaic, oppressive, hierarchy of some of today's institutions of so called higher education.

Marianne K. Martin with Dawn of the Dance, Legacy of Love, Love in the Balance, and her latest, Mirrors, proves to be one of America's most talented of new emerging writers of Romance novels for women. We look forward to a long and prolific career!

MARIANNE MARTIN THIS IS HER THRID BOOK AND SHE GETS BETTER WITH EACH BOOK SHE WRITES. THE STORY OF "DAWN OF THE DANCE" WILL MAKE YOU THINK AND ASK YOURSELF WHAT WOULD YOU DO FOR LOVE? AND WHAT WOULD YOU LET SOMEONE DO FOR LOVE? I LOVE THIS BOOK IT WAS HER BEST ONE YET.