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    Conscience Point
    Conscience Point
    Conscience Point
    Ebook296 pages4 hours

    Conscience Point

    By Erica Abeel

    2.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Madeleine Shaye has a successful dual career as a concert pianist and TV arts correspondent, a great relationship with her grown daughter, and a love affair that is the envy of friends. She believes she has all the luck. But her blissful life suddenly unravels in this genre-bending novel about a mysterious love with two faces, a shocking betrayal, and the passion to reclaim old dreams.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUnbridled Books
    Release dateOct 1, 2008
    ISBN9781936071159
    Conscience Point

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    Reviews for Conscience Point

    2.5/5

    4 ratings8 reviews

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    • 3/5
      A story of familiar comforts, a veil of deciept and a shroud of deep seeded unexpected betrayal will leave the reader aghast. One womans journey through the storm and into a stronger sense of self and purpose.
    • 1/5
      This book is well written however it takes almost 100 pages to actually get "into" the book. The plot is slow moving and the character development is not as good as I would have liked. Maddy is a woman that seems to have what we all want and then we quickly realize that what is on the outside is not what it seems. Her family falls apart before her eyes and without a seconds notice she is caught in a whirlwind of turmoil. The story could be told in fewer pages therefore the character development and the details needed to be better to catch the readers attention. There is alot of superfluous information and not enough detail.
    • 4/5
      Erica Abeel's Conscience Point, published by Unbridled Books, started off rough for me, with shifts in tone and language for one of the main characters, Nick Ashcroft. After about 60 pages or so, I became absorbed in the dark secrets and the Gothic mystery surrounding the once lavish estate of Conscience Point. Madeleine Shaye is a concert pianist, an arts journalist, a mother, and a lover who allows passion to derail her career and lead her down a path that is wrought with disappointment and heartache. Nick Ashcroft and his sister Violet lead Shaye onto this path and become the center of her world, despite Maddie's obliviousness. The deep secret that tears her relationship with Nick apart is predictable at best, but Abeel weaves a setting that captivates the read and lulls them into the fantasy.Shaye is a young pianist befriended by an eccentric artist from a wealthy New York family, Violet Ashcroft. She's easily dazzled by the estate, Conscience Point's ambiance, and the stormy eyes of Violet's brother Nick. Despite the separation between Nick and Maddie that lasts several years and through one marriage each, they connect as most artists will with exploding passion in a paradise far from their "real" worlds. Their love is a fantasy that sweeps up Maddie and leaves her blind to the reality of her self-constructed family. "Love cannot dwell with suspicion" is an apt theme running through the first portion of this novel, which stems from an ancient Roman myth featuring Cupid and Psyche. However, amidst the turmoil that her life becomes, Maddie is once again swept up by her true passion--music.Through the initial pages of the novel, Nick uses terms like "thistle-y" and "joint," which seem incongruous, and the narrator interrupts herself to stop herself from digressing. These sections can be disruptive to the reader, but as they become less frequent and the pace of the drama picks up, the reader is absorbed."She'd never imagined you could love this hard yet keep yourself for your work. They swung through the hours, grooved as trapeze artists. Nick understood the musician's life, its ardor and implacable demands. . . . She in turn marveled at how he teased out the shapely book hiding in some winding manuscript;" (page 46)While the plot of this novel is often cliche in many ways, the real gem is the poetic language and intricate weave of music and art throughout the novel. Maddie's magic fingers hit the keys and the reader is drawn into the world of an artist, and again conversations with her friend Anton about music and its composers easily draws readers into their highly dramatic world.
    • 4/5
      After reading the first chapter or so of this book, I was skeptical. What I saw as Abeel's half-hearted use of stream of consciousness writing confused me at first because I didn't know whether she had meant to write it that way or whether it was just an editing mistake. But as the novel progressed, I felt like the author became more and more sure of herself and consequently, I became more and more sure of my enjoyment of the novel. It's superbly human. Human in the most banal form, and also in the most sublime. It tackles the perpetually popular theme of "inappropriate love," once using a quote from Pascal that said something along the lines of "The heart has it's reasons, though they may be outside reason." We cannot help whom we love, nor can we avoid the crushing weight of having our hearts broken. Conscience Point includes themes like betrayal, mother-daughter relations, love, friendship, vengeance, and the achievement of long sought-after dreams. To read this novel is to recognize humanity in oneself and in the world. In short, I am immensely happy that I received this book through Early Reviewers, if only because I might never have picked it up otherwise.
    • 1/5
      My first thought upon reading this book was that this is a very strange name for this book, for most of the characters were really pretty unconscionable. They were flat and not at all sympathetical. I really didn't care about any of them. I will come right out and say I did not like the book. This is written as a "story of the rich and famous". The storyline takes place in the news, publishing and music business world. The main character, Maddy, is a concert pianist and does a music news commentary show. She meets a family consisting of a mother who seems to like her many birds better than she likes her children, Violet, who is a painter, and Nick, who is a book publisher. Maddy develops a friendship with Violet and they eventually become sexually involved. Violet, an alcoholic sees that Maddy is going to become involved with her brother, at which point she flees the continent where she gets deeply into drugs and lives in a seedy world with another lesbian lover.She contacts Maddy out of the blue one day and begs her to come to Europe to see her. When Maddy arrives, Violet presents her with a baby girl whom she claims is hers and begs Maddy to take her home and raise her as her own. Maddy names the little girl Laila and the story begins as the adoptive daughter is about 19 years of age. By this time Maddy has been in a long term relationship with Nick for about eight years. Nick and Laila become inclandestine lovers and it takes Maddie a while to figure it out. When she does, all hell breaks loose. She finds out Laila is pregnant and is going to go away. Maddie and Nick break it off. They live their lives, such as they are for a time. Violet passes away and eventually they find out that Laila did not actually belong to Violet, but to her lesbian lover. Then Nick comes crawling back to Maddy wanting her to take him back. She actually is with him for a while and considers it, but in the end tells him she will take a pass on it. The plot line outside all this totally slipped by me if indeed there was one at all, except for the music. And to be honest, some of the piano scenes were written beautifully.There were also some lovely lines within the book."Love cannot dwell with suspicion.""Cupid is telling Psyche bye-bye. He's splitting because Violet to Maddy: Psyche didn't trust him---maybe she had her reasons. 'Love cannot dwell with suspicion'. That's what Cupid's telling Psyche, the bastard."Paganini made people weep with the playing of a scale.In our dream we would live in the divine dissatisfaction of the artist. Honestly those were the best parts of the book for me. This is another book, that once I started it---it was so bad that I knew if I put it down for whatever reason I would never pick it up again. I cannot, in all honesty, recommend this book and there is no way I would ever read it again.
    • 3/5
      Conscience Point tells the story of Maddy, a concert pianist, and her family. Things seem to be going right for Maddy, she appears to have a loving relationship with her boyfriend and a typical relationship with her adopted daughter. However, things are not as they seem. When Maddy discovers a secret relationship between hew boyfriend and daughter, she takes matters into her own hands and plots their downfall. There are many twists to this story, and I enjoyed as they unraveled. It took me awhile to get into this story and to understand what was happening. It jumps around in time, and was often difficult for me to follow. Overall, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it as an interesting read.
    • 3/5
      As a fan of several of the great classic Gothic novels, I was much intrigued by Conscience Point's promise of "Gothic atmospherics". Especially in the beginning the book delivered on this; however, I found both atmosphere and characters beginning to fall flat and less believable as the story progressed. Towards the end, the characters did seem to flesh out again making the story a great deal more sympathetic. Overall, the author's prose were a pleasure to read.
    • 2/5
      I really didn't like this book. I won it some time ago and am only reviewing it now because I have started to read it many times and just couldn't get into it. I still haven't finished it and have decided to spend no more tim eon it. It is the story Maddy, a successful career woman, her adopted grown daughter and her lover Nick, a successful book editor who is at a crossroads in his career and maybe in his personal life, and a gothic house/estate at the center of their shared history. I tried to care about these characters and their history,and I did a little but there never seemed to be any real plot to hold my attention.They move about not really doing anything.Perhaps if I read just a little farther osmething interesting would happen but after 200 pages I gave up. This book was not for me...but that's just me. Others might love it.

    Book preview

    Conscience Point - Erica Abeel

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