Coming Undone by Susan Andersen **

Coming Undone by Susan Andersen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


AUDIO BOOK REVIEW When I read this in print - the 4th in a series that I had really liked - I rated it 2 stars. I thought it seemed too forced, the reactions of the characters not realistic, PJ's character especially being obnoxious. But I got this audiobook free at the library, so I decided to give it a try, since I usually like Susan Andersen's writing. Nicole Poole as narrator gets a sort of B+ on this one from me. She managed to infuse some realism into the story and raise it to 3 stars - hearing it in her voice, rather than just in my head, smoothed some of the reactions. It still felt forced, and Andersen's use of similes in this book got old after the first 4 or 5 dozen. I get it, that's supposed to be how southerners talk, right? (insert wry smile here)

Back to the narration: Poole was good, mostly, but she did have a few times where her pauses seemed to come in the wrong places, as if maybe she hadn't really read it before doing the recording and paused at the end of a page only to take back up on the next one. Her PJ voice was ok, her Jared voice pretty good, her Esme voice - well, minor character, so never mind; her Nell, Hank and Eddie voices all pretty mediocre - but consistent. She also narrated 2 of Rachel Gibson's Author Friends series, and I really liked her voice on those. Maybe she's better with better material!



My first read was in print, June, 2008. Here's that review:

Maybe I'm cursed. Maybe it's the moon.

I didn't much like Coming Undone. And I'm devastated to admit it.

Here I've been starting every one of my reviews of Andersen's books with Another Winner - but now, well, it ain't. And coming on the heels of my not much liking the latest Julia Quinn, it makes me question my very existence. Could it be me??

Coming Undone is the 4th installment in her Marine series, which was supposed to be a trilogy about these 3 former Marine buddies, Coop, Zach and John. Then Andersen decided to write the last one for John's brother-in-law Jared and his buddy PJ who appear in the third book.

I mentioned in that review that some time needed to go by because, after all, PJ was only 13 in that book. Andersen decided she could make it be 15 years that had passed, so the hero and heroine are fully grown up. Which makes it sometime in the future? Her note in the book admits she is using a known soap opera gimmick, where a child is born, then a year or so later, the child is a teenager.

She lost me at about page 20. First, we get a prologue putting Jared into the situation: PJ is now a country music star, and her recording company has hired Semper Fi Security to provide security for her on her upcoming tour. John, head of Semper Fi, chooses Jared to be the one. So now we know Jared is working for John, and that's about all we know.

Then we find PJ, who hasn't really disappeared as the tabloids are saying, but has just decided to take a road trip and hasn't checked in with anyone. PJ has just recently fired her manager - her no-good bitch of a mother - for embezzling, and the old lady is ratting her out to the press with a bunch of lies. I guess we're supposed to imagine the studio fell for the lies and that is why they hired Semper Fi, to keep PJ on the straight 'n' narrow. So, enter Jared. PJ is delighted to see him - it's been 15 years since their 2 week friendship on the streets of Denver, and they didn't keep up after that. Wait, wait, she's only delighted for a minute then she's pissed and the next thing you know, she's let the air out of his tires and split.

WTF?

OK, wait: here is the assignment: per John, "Wild Wind Records retained us to find your old friend Priscilla Jayne." Then he says: "...mission is going to be two-fold. First to locate... Then to accompany her on her tour to make sure she doesn't disappear again."

So, yeah, it sounds like they don't trust her. But I guess we're supposed to remember how she just reacts off the cuff before thinking, like she did at 13. Or something.

Anyway, whatever the reasoning, I didn't follow it. She does everything possible to shake Jared off her trail. And so there's this immediate antagonism. And I just didn't buy it - I didn't buy the way she immediately jumped into his arms when they first met either. I didn't find either reaction reasonable or credible.

Basically, for the first half of the book, he tries to be reasonable and professional with her, and she does everything she can to get him away or in trouble or whatever. She tells a hotel manager he's a stalker. She convinces a bartender to have the bouncer throw him out of a bar where she performs. She lets her band members think he's a nuisance.

He spends a lot of his time reminding himself he's a glacier - and that includes after they finally decide to act on their attraction (attraction? didn't see it coming, did ya?). He's a big cold glacier who - damn him - insists on providing his women with multiple orgasms before succumbing to his own. What a jerk, huh? Well PJ thinks so - because he's so cold and calculating.

She should read Loving Evangeline by Linda Howard if she thinks Jared was cold and calculating. He doesn't begin to reach the level of that hero.

Let's see - I kept plodding onward, thinking maybe, just maybe, I'd get more invested in their story. Andersen does her "we-don't-know-whose-POV-we're-dealing-with" tactic (as well as her including-hyphenated-phrases-to-a-new-level device) to introduce a fanatic. This one's going to show PJ some old tyme religion if she doesn't straighten up. So just when Jared decides his work is done, we get a warning from the psycho, and his job changes from watchdog to protector.

Then, let's see, yada yada yada, blah blah blah, oh yeah, the secondary romance. We have to out an ugly duckling. Nell is a song-writer/manager. They sure seem to have a tiny little crew - 2 musicians, Nell and PJ are it (oh and the bus driver). It seemed inadequate, using my theater background for comparison. Anyway, Nell is not thin, doesn't wear makeup and dresses blandly. And she has a crush on 1 of the 2 musicians. Of course, duh, he (Eddie) only dates young bimbos, and the other musician (Hank) is the one with the hots for her. So - let's take Nell shopping, and let's get her some better clothes and makeup so someone will notice her.

To be honest, I wanted Jared to make a sort of play for Nell. He did compliment her but maybe PJ would have been a leeeetle bit more aware if... OK, so Andersen didn't play the jealousy card. But I needed something to get me interested. Now we have our swan Nell - and Eddie asks her if she lost weight. This crushes the life out of her crush - meanwhile Hank is bowled over. One thing eventually leads to another and Hank and Nell finally get hot and heavy. Just to be sure, later in the story Eddie almost sees the light, asks her out and she turns him down. OK, whew, got that outta our systems, huh?

OK, where was I? Oh yeah. I gave up and went to bed, thinking maybe if I finished it today I'd be happier. The stalker is finally revealed through some sloppy PI work - really, Jared, what took you so long? And he makes a move at the one time Jared lets down his guard. Jared manages to rush in at the last minute, and in her frenzy PJ tells him she loves him.

Whoa. (like we didn't all expect this, even if there wasn't quite enough evidence to actually say we saw it coming). That brings his guard up. OH NO MR BILL! Jared can't trust anyone but the Marines and his family!! And especially not PJ who left him without a trace after their 2-week ordeal 15 years ago when she was 13!!!

And on top of all this inanery, what in the world does this phrase in the epilogue mean: "a brunette with pale skin, red lipstick and a striking white streak in her black hair" Hello - is she brunette "a person with dark (brown) hair" or is her hair black? (it's Ronnie, from Book 1, of course - it's black). Arg.

OK look, I can't give it 2 stars. Really, I just can't - can I? Because, I mean, maybe it's ME. Maybe it's because I bought it full price instead of swapping it on PBS. Maybe it's the phase of the moon (half). By the way, they both admit they love each other, and the epilogue is their wedding shower, in case there was any question of a HEA.

Cutting Loose by Susan Andersen **(*)

My first review of this book from 2008 was of the paperback, and it is the first in a trilogy, so now that I've read the second (the third hasn't been published and might not be) AND the audio of this one, I'm going to go ahead and give it a 3rd star to bring it to the "it's Ok but mediocre" level.

so here's the first review:
--------------------------------

arg. One of my favorite authors, and this new release is a stinker.

I think it's a combination of things that I really don't like:

(1) I don't like the voice of this book. Too... too much jargon, too much hard to follow banter that doesn't sound like people really talk. And jeez, this guy Dev - come'on - no guy thinks like this, do they??
2010 audio comment: the "voice" of the book is slightly easier to listen to, even if the narrator isn't that good.

(2) Forced - we're forced to read all this odd psychobabble about Jane the heroine and her parents and how because they're so dramatic, she's the complete opposite. We're forced into believing these 3 women are best friends forever - it's a trilogy of women thing. I have liked the 3-women premise before but this time I just don't get it. Which one was the "blond friend" anyway? Couldn't she have just referred to them by their names?
2010 audio comment: now that I have read the second book in the trilogy AND heard this audiobook, it really was easier to keep track of the women since I wasn't able to skim. The psychobabble was still reaching though.

(3) Oh puhleez, the villain! Give me a f*cking break. I skimmed most of his scenes.
2010 audio comment: still think the villain doesn't come across as a 3 dimensional, potentially real person - still too comic-book-ish for me, especially given this one doesn't have Andersen's great humor

(4) The storyline - the women inherit a mansion from a rich old woman? It just didn't ring true.
2010 audio comment: I still find this storyline implausible. But then, I read time travel, so I guess I'll go with the leap of faith.

There was more. Do Americans of Irish descent actually call their fathers "Da"? Maybe, but then their speech pattern was a little... Irish... too so were they actually Irish? Or just stereotypical?
2010 audio comment: the narrator - who wasn't great - did not give them any Irish accent and the "Da" seemed out of place. Aunt Eileen's brogue wasn't good either.

I started to give this 3 stars. I did in fact read the whole thing, after all. But then as I thought about it, I realized I. Did. Not. Like. It. (that is a direct reference to the book by the way.) So even though I've loved so many of Andersen's books, I just can't find it in me to like this one.

But it's worth a credit on PBS where some hapless fool, uh I mean some other member has it wishlisted. And hey - there's even a review there from someone who did like it. Go figure.

OK, I'll do a little bit of description.

Three women, friends from elementary school. Heroine: Jane - parents third-rate actors, overly dramatic, quasi-alcoholic. BFFs Ava and Poppy - one is blonde, one is red-headed, one is rich, one is Darma from Darma and Greg - but who can remember which is which? Not me.

Irish American family, 4 brothers running a construction business; 2 are married, 2 single; 1 is undergoing chemo, so our hero Devlin comes home from his usual life of sailing yachts overseas to help out the family business.

The women inherit a Seattle mansion. Jane is a junior curator at a museum that inherited jewels and clothing from same deceased. The 3 BFF women hire the Irish American fellows to renovate.

Dev and Jane have instant across-the-room chemistry, then have hot monkey sex, then - oh noes! - fall in love.

Meanwhile a really really evil bad guy steals things from the mansion.

OK, see where it is going? Neither do I.

2 stars.
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2010 Audio Comments - yeah, I can give it a qualified 3 stars, but the narrator wasn't great. She wasn't AWFUL but her reading was sing-songy, and her men's voices - especially considering how low her own voice as narrator is - were done as if they were teens in the middle of changing voices. She used a sort of hoarse sound for Dev, the hero. And I'm afraid she didn't give Andersen's attempt at sounding like 20-somethings (20+10 in this case) any credence - she just read it like she read the narration, so the excess of jargon fell flat. Didn't work in my head reading it; didn't work in my head hearing this narrator speak it. Maybe it calls for a 20-something who talks like that to read it.

thank goodness for free library downloads

Skintight by Susan Andersen *****

Audio booked it! Got it from the library and finished it up this morning - still a 5 star story!

FROM JUNE 2008:

Another winner from Ms Andersen! This is my 6th book of Andersen's, and so far I'm having a blast. Her writing is witty, interesting, hot - plotlines work for me - characters fully developed (if a little zany) - I'm enjoying them all immensely!

Skintight takes place in Las Vegas where heroine Treena is a dancer in a show. A Show Girl from a steel mill town in the east, where she grew up in a big, happy-enough family, feeling like the outsider because she had bigger dreams than marrying out of high school and staying there. She worked her way up in the world, paid for her own dance classes and made it big. As part of her backstory, she marries a much older man who, as it turns out, was dying from cancer. He was rich - but lost it all to the costs of health care - and died within months of their marriage.

His son, Jackson "Jax Gallagher" McCall is out to steal back what should have been his: a priceless autographed baseball now in Treena's possession. As it turns out, although it was not left to Jax in his father's will, Treena always intended to find him and give it back because she knew that's what his dad wanted. But Jax wasn't around - he wasn't there when his dad was dying, he didn't attend the funeral, and she's never met him - so she's in no hurry.

Jax comes to LV as a professional poker player in a tournament and has a plan: he'll introduce himself to his dad's widow with his professional name (Gallagher), seduce her so he can gain access to her house, find the ball after he's boffed her senseless, and skeedaddle. His backstory is that his mother died when he was young, and his dad raised him - poorly. He was a geek - a big, tall, brainy, scrawny geek - and his dad seemed to want an athlete. He skipped 3 grades in school, went to MIT at 14, but always felt like the outsider (see a pattern here??) and never felt he lived up to his dad's expectations.

Now he's a big, tall, brainy, built professional poker player with plenty of money. Unfortunately, under the influence of alcohol, he bet the baseball in a poker game to a fellow who is determined to get it by force if necessary. Hence the plan - he figures his dad's widow is a money-grubbing gold digger bimbo, and that his plan will work when he wows her with his money. In his mind, there's no point in just asking for it because she would never give it away. But he miscalculated - a big problem for a mathematical genius poker player!

There's a fun secondary romance that is almost unnecessary, but fills in the "built family" aspect - 2 middle-aged single neighbors who finally give in to their attraction for each other. They act as mother and father in her "built family" of neighbors who drop in and give advice and get in the way. The whole "built family" aspect is important to Jax in making him feel home for the first time in his life, contributing to his feeling of well-being with Treena. For me, this part makes the characterization of their relationship whole - it isn't just a lust attraction, but the whole package, and they develop a friendship outside the bedroom that is very realistic.

Of course, Andersen writes bacon-sizzling hot love scenes too, which doesn't hurt. I got a kick out of the obligatory "sex against the door" scene when he realizes he was rushing her, and tries another tactic. While she appreciates that, she decides she still wants the door aspect and manages to finagle it later.

And there's the other neighbor, another dancer, leading her way into her own story - Just for Kicks, next on my TBR list.

I enjoyed the hell out of this book - 5 stars and a keeper for sure. I re-read the AAR review for it - I like to see how other people characterize the books I read. Sometimes I feel they put what I felt into words better than I can, but in the case of this review, we diverged. That reviewer felt the whole identity deception on Jax's part messed up the story for her - it was out of character, and she didn't like waiting for the Big Reveal. I felt like Andersen made the slip-up of betting the ball very believable - no matter how one feels about one's parents, the death of a parent does affect most people, and Jax was affected and reacted. I felt waiting for the Big Reveal was part of the suspense of the novel (what will happen next?) and I also felt the way Treena discovers his identity was very realistic.

There ya go, different strokes for different folks. After all - if he could have just ASKED for the ball, there would be no story and we would have been short-changed.


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Audio notes: the narrator is Johanna Parker, who reads the Sookie Stackhouse series. She's good - not grrrreat (Barbara Rosenblatt, Davina Porter, Anna Fields), but really good. I thought she did a fine reading on this book, giving each character his or her own, consistent voice. 5 stars.

Head Over Heels by Susan Andersen *****

What makes a great book even better? An audio book of it - read by Kate Fleming/Anna Fields! Yay! I located a set of cassettes of this out-of-print audio book, and digitized them as I knew I'd want to listen more than once. Since digitizing is a 1x deal, I also listened to it.

here's my original review from 2008:
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Ok, I keep calling her books "another winner" - what the heck, they are! Head Over Heels has some of Andersen's stock plot lines and character attributes, but it doesn't make me feel like she's writing the same story over and over.

Our heroine is Veronica, an interior decorator who lives in Seattle. She's just arrived in her home town of Fossil, in East Washington state, having just learned about her sister's murder that occurred a month ago while she was out of the country on business. Both their parents are also gone, and Veronica has inherited the family business, a bar called the Tonk, her sister's home and at least temporary custody of her niece, 6 year old Lizzy, because Lizzy's father has been accused of the murder and is currently on the lam.

When Veronica goes into the bar to meet the current manager/bartender and see how things are going, she gets a rush of why she wanted to leave all those years ago: in her own personal memory of her upbringing, her father was a party-guy and her mother worked too hard to please him, both running the bar. She and her sister worked in the bar until she left town - her sister had been running it ever since. She hated the bar and working there, and wants to just sell it and take Lizzy with her back to her life in Seattle.

Our hero is Cooper Blackstock, who is doing a little undercover by working as the current manager/bartender for the Tonk, not letting on to anyone that Eddie, Lizzy's father, is his half-brother. As far as Coop is concerned, Eddie is innocent even if he did run, and he wants to see if he can figure out the killer's identity. Coop's backstory: 13 years in the Marines and currently a best-selling author under a slight pseudonym, James Lee Cooper (his first name really is James).

Of course, the chemistry between Ronnie and Coop is pretty immediate, and it isn't all good chemistry - they're fighting like cats and dogs right off the bat. A friend, Marissa, had been taking care of the bar for Ronnie while trying to locate her, and hired Coop and also leased him the upstairs room in the sister's house - so now he's living with Ronnie and Lizzy.

Meanwhile - we get the scary killer's POV but only vague clues to his identity as little pieces of the puzzle begin to come to light. Apparently the sister had an affair with someone famous or upstanding in the community, and fingers are pointing around. Whoever it is is feeling pretty cocky about how he has fooled everyone.

There's a cute secondary romance between Marissa, who is widowed, and Kody the refrigerator guy who has a thing about women with kids. This plot device has shown up before: Kody's sister has a son, and she sleeps around. Kody has seen the nephew get attached to all these men who then up and leave her - and him - and he has sworn off girlfriends with kids to avoid this situation for the kids' sakes. So, he'll go out with her, and sleep with her when the kids are away, but he doesn't want to ever meet the kids. Once she figures out he has a problem with her kids, she drops him. It's interesting how Andersen maneuvers the dialog so when you read it you see what each one is saying and also how the other misunderstands the motives. Ah, remember it's a romance, and they manage to get together and straighten it all out.

Meanwhile, Coop is looking for any clues, and Ronnie is falling in love - but, oops, someone recognizes Coop and spills the beans about his relationship to Eddie in front of Ronnie. There goes that whole trust thing! Coop, sensitive Marine that he is, does some serious courting - flowers, gifts, you name it (he loves Lizzy's new cat; he's great with kids; he probably even eats quiche) - and manages to get back in her good graces. Whew - good thing too, because he has fallen head over heels for her! (get it??)

But Coop has one secret left untold, about his occupation (best selling author). From her perspective, he's a drifter without ambition, just like her dad. She imagines a life with him will be like her parents, and she doesn't want that. So she asks him to tell her exactly what he does for a living so she can deal with it. But Coop is stubborn - he grew up never being good enough for his mother, and he doesn't want to tell her - he wants her love unconditionally, without it being based on what he does for a living. He's concerned she won't love him for who he is when she realizes he's making big bucks on his books. She even tells him that it doesn't matter what he does but it does matter that he won't tell her - but they are both stubborn and hold out, causing a major rift.

Well - they hold out until the killer is revealed and kidnaps Ronnie. Then all bets are off. As soon as she's released, both are ready to forgive anything and everything. Ya know, I think even then I'd have been a leeetle teensy more put out about what his secret was than she was, though!! OK, hard to say since I wasn't kidnapped. Maybe that clouds the judgement.

Lots of laughs, pretty hot love scenes - I rate it 5 but not the same 5 as others of hers. There I go with that whole rating thing - it's higher than a 4 for me, but maybe 4 3/4 is what I need for this one. I loved it but not as much as the last 2 of hers I read (Skintight and Just for Kicks).

Added in 2010: ok, the audiobook is flawless (now that I digitized it and removed all the repeated sentences...) and raises it from that 4 3/4 to a definite 5 - Kate Fleming was an amazingly brilliant narrator and really made this one shine! (but I still feel Coop owed Ronnie a major apology for holding out on his career...)

Burning Up by Susan Andersen ****

Andersen is one of my favorite contemporary romance authors. She writes upbeat, fun and often funny plots, with fully fleshed out characters, and some of them have become Save From the Fire keepers for me.

This one was good, I really liked it but it never quite crossed into keeper status. For one thing, it seemed like she was trying too hard to use that Deep POV that Suzanne Brockmann uses/describes - getting so truly into the head and thoughts of the character that even the narrative uses their style of speaking, as if we were actually hearing their thoughts. This became almost too cutesy for me - as if everything the protagonists thought was at a level-5-high-anxiety, practically from page 1. Like Andersen was trying too hard. I dunno. It bothered me.

But I liked the characters pretty well - Macy was the misunderstood girl who in high school had been wrongly accused of being easy, and still carried the reputation and the scars from that. She had made something of herself as a star of music videos (I guess it ages me that I didn't even realize there were stars in music videos other than the musicians) but that didn't stop the local crowd, still stuck in Dumfukville, er I mean Sugarville, from hating her. Everywhere she went, people still talked about her, behind her back and even in her face. (man, I'm glad I don't go back to my small home town!)

Gabe was the new fire chief, big, buff and also with a past - a mother who left him in foster homes, a wild teenager who managed to straighten up and become a true hero. It was a little unsettling to find out he had a steady date in Sugarville - Grace - and I knew Andersen wasn't going to have our hero cheat, so she was going to have to kill off Grace somehow. She managed to do it by introducing one more character, a rock star friend of Macy's. That also gave Gabe some competition even though Rock Star and Macy were really like sister and brother. Oh - she didn't actually kill Grace, but she did have Gabe break up with her so he could pursue Macy, which worked for Grace since she was far more attracted to the Rock Star anyway.

The other plot swirling around was some dumpster and abandoned home fires that were starting to smack of arson - a sort of background mystery plot that gave Gabe something to do while Macy was in town.

It wasn't much of a mystery - mostly she concentrated on getting Macy and Gabe together and letting them get accustomed to their new feelings. She writes hot getting-together scenes, and that includes the tension building ones where one of our protagonists comes to his or her senses before they get too far. She included a couple of kids and a kindly Auntie Em and Uncle Henry (not their real names) to round out the family. Her books are big on creating families from the friends and neighbors when the hero or heroine have no immediate families of their own.

It was a pretty quick read, although I did skim a little too much and missed some details that made me go backtracking. I Liked It A Lot 4 stars!

Hot & Bothered by Susan Andersen *****

Hot & Bothered is #3 in her Marine series, and features John "Rocket" Miglionni from books 1 and 2. Rocket got his nickname from something he keeps in his pants - yeah, that something. Apparently it's impressive enough for the other guys to have noticed and christened him this. He had a reputation with the ladies - he liked to love 'em and leave 'em, complete with rules right up front: no last names, nothing longer than a week. Until he met Tori - who slipped away before her week was out, never to return, 6 years ago now.

Then he changed.

I have a serious thing for Ms. Andersen's books, and I loved Hot & Bothered too - but I will say that reading them back-to-back does evoke déja vu feelings, as she uses some similar plot devices and even some similar phrases. Maybe a book or 2 between would soften that feeling - it isn't so prevalent that you feel you've already read the book - just enough to make you think, wait-a-minute, didn't I read that line already?

Tori is Victoria Evans Hamilton, whose father has recently been murdered. The #1 suspect is her teen half brother Jared, now on the lam. The senior Hamilton left the bulk of his enormous wealth to his 2 kids, having signed a fairly tight pre-nup with trophy wife #5 that left her with very little. Tori is convinced Jared couldn't have done it, and has her lawyer hire a PI to find Jared. Who's the best PI of them all? John Miglionni, of Semper Fi Investigations. Yep - the Rocket hisself.

Rocket comes with the usual Andersen baggage - what was it this time? A family that moved around too much? A mother who didn't love him enough, or died when he was young, or something. One of those things that left him feeling like he wasn't worthy of love, and taught him not to count on anyone but himself and his Marine buddies, ever. Hoo Yah. OK - I didn't feel this cynical while I was reading, but it's the morning after and my afterglow has faded a little.

Tori suffers from a similar problem - dead mother (trophy wife #1), mean father, feels enormous responsibility for brother Jared, yada yada yada. She chose to separate herself from her father (and Jared) by an ocean, so she was living in London with her 5+ year old daughter when the murder happened. Wait. Back up - 5+ year old daughter born out of wedlock, last had wild monkey sex with Rocket about 6 years ago... Hmmmm.... Could it be the Secret Pregnancy plot???

I'm afraid so. But, how could she have told him? Remember the rules? No last names - and they met in Pensacola on spring break. And they used condoms! But there is a 4% failure rate, after all. But yeah, who knew who or where the father was? Again - I didn't have any trouble going with this premise because it's the journey, not the plot devices that make or break the story!

OK - so John Miglionni has been hired to work with Victoria Evans Hamilton, and when he walks in and they both realize who the other is, it's a major shock to both of them. For her, the father of her daughter. For him, the woman who changed his life (in more ways than even he realizes, though!). While he is interviewing her about Jared, in comes 5 year old Esme - with mummy's hair and daddy's eyes. It takes Rocket about, oh, 35 nanoseconds to do the math.

Rocket isn't one of those I'm-the-daddy-now-I-adore-Esme-and-want-partial-custody guys. He figures out quickly that he is in way over his head on this issue and needs some time to figure out what he wants. And ya gotta give it to Tori - she takes the middle road, asking him what his intentions are. Of course she won't need his money - she's got a bucket load of it. They agree not to disclose his paternity to anyone but he decides he'll move into the Evans Hamilton estate while he works on the case, giving him time to get to know Esme and maybe... Maybe what? Who knows, because he doesn't give any indication that he intends to establish a daddy-daughter relationship with Esme.

Meanwhile Jared has left Colorado Springs for Denver, and is living homeless and on the streets. He meets a buddy, PJ, a 13-year-old runaway. PJ stands for Priscilla Jayne, as it turns out, which shocks the hell out of him since she looks like a scrawny little boy. PJ has street smarts and the 2 become fast buddies while she teaches him the ropes. Her mom threw her out and refuses to let her come home. Spoiler type hint: they are the hero and heroine of the next book - although I'm hoping it's been several years because I don't want Jared arrested for sexual assault on a minor, and she's got at least 5 years to go.

Jared thinks he did kill his father - he shoved him, causing him to fall and hit his head. Jared tried to get a pulse, found none, panicked and split. But the fall didn't kill the old bastard - a letter opener through the heart did.

John goes about getting info on Jared, including meeting with the local police to get their take on the situation. Once he decides that Jared will be railroaded, he and Tori realize the best way to clear Jared will be to find the killer - which changes John's job duties. He decides the best way to get info is to gain access to the father's friends, and on a whim announces he's Tori's fiancé at the father's funeral. It was actually a gut reaction to meeting someone interested in Tori, but he figured it would be his undercover disguise too. He keeps sorta forgetting there's another (little) person to think about before he makes these rash decisions though, and now they have to explain the make-believe game to Esme too.

This is an incredibly long review already in which I feel like I've rewritten the entire book and yet I haven't given away any of the secrets! Like - whodunnit, and why. I won't - suffice it to say, she works in a plot device or two to make you wonder who it could and could not have been (not trophy wife, because of the pre-nup; not the erstwhile first love, because he lost a big opportunity as a result of the death), and she works in another plot device that I found a big stretch (climbing a tree, which makes Tori realize something is odd about the house...??) to uncover the killer's identity and reasoning.

I think my favorite scene in the book which had me laughing out loud was John and Esme playing War Barbies - or as she called it, Raccoon Ants (a 5 year old translation of reconnaissance which is John's Marine forte - what the heck, right?).

Oh, and I haven't mentioned the fact that John and Tori are still attracted to one another and eventually, finally, find occasion to act on it. At that point, we have their failure to clearly communicate - John assumes she feels he is beneath her social class so the relationship cannot last; Tori assumes John is still living by his rules which means no relationship longer than a week, which he has clearly outlasted and therefore should by all rights be chomping at the bit to get away. And we still have that complication of whether or when to announce Esme's paternity as well as how John will fit into Esme's life.

Did I mention it's a Romance? Of course it is and it takes them a while to get - and take Jared and Esme with them - to the HEA.


UPDATE ON FEB 21 2009: I got this on audio, narrator Richard Ferrone who also narrated Elizabeth Lowell's Only His. Except for his slightly annoying Esme voice and more annoying PJ voice, I like Ferrone's reading on both this and Only His. So I changed the date of this post to put it in 2009.

I managed to snag a copy of Coming Undone at Hastings today (it's only fair that I actually PAY for a copy of a book by one of my favorite authors*, after all!) so that is next. For this one, somewhere between 4 and 5 stars, loved it, yay Susan Andersen, you go girl!

(* in that same vein, I paid for a new copy of the latest Julia Quinn, and even snagged a new copy of a Linda Howard book too.)

Present Danger by Susan Andersen

I wasn't sure I was going to like this book - it seems I had read something about her earlier, non-comedy, romantic suspense novels that made me think they wouldn't be as good as her later romantic comedies.

Hmmm, either I was really wrong or I made that up about not liking them. I loved this story.

The heroine is Aunie, a Southern belle divorcée and spousal abuse victim who runs away from Atlanta to start a new life. She shows up in Seattle, bruised and battered, at James' apartment house where his apartment manager Lola rents her an apartment.

James is more than upset about this - he's had enough of bearing the responsibility of his brothers' fuckups without taking on a stranger's as well. He can tell just by looking at her swollen, bruised face and broken nose that she has trouble following her, and he lets her and Lola know this with no uncertainties.

Aunie's backstory: she grew up thinking her beauty is her only asset - her mother comes from a rich, old Southern family but she married down - poor - for love. According to her mother, love is fleeting and you might as well just marry rich instead. When a man 16 years her elder, rich and charming, woos her, she falls in love with him and her new life - for a while. But Wesley only wanted her for one thing: decoration. When being constantly at his beck and call to dress up and show off for clients is the only thing he allows her to do, she divorces him. That drives him over the edge, and he begins stalking her, and eventually beats her senseless. Well, not completely senseless - when she leaves, it's without a trace - almost.

James' backstory: he grew up in the Projects, no dad around, and mom had to work 2 jobs to keep him and his 3 brothers in shoes and food. He was always the responsible one, and when his lifelong dream of being a well-known cartoonist comes true, he's the only one with any money - now used too much to bail out the brothers. He also loves working with his hands, so he's purchased a historical apartment building and is renovating it.

When Aunie starts receiving odd calls where no one speaks, she assumes it's Wesley. This brings James and Lola's husband Otis into action - they set up an alarm system, they act as bodyguards and they help prepare her to protect herself. But when push comes to shove, and neither of them are there, Aunie has no one but herself to rely on.

This is not a story where you are wondering whodunit - you know who the bad guy is but the suspense is in whether or not he can find her, and if he does, what will happen. The suspense is deepened by the phone calls, because apparently there is someone else making scary phone calls to other women, so it isn't clear who is behind the calls.

Meanwhile, Aunie and James develop a relationship, starting with his showing his protection and deepening into something more. Once again, Andersen shows her skill at writing hot love scenes as well as showing us what her characters are feeling and why - bringing their minds into mine so I feel along with them. Aunie is able to express her own feelings sooner, but James falls just as hard, maybe harder because he's bigger.

The secondary characters in the book are wonderful too - Lola and Otis, trying to conceive a child; James' brothers, each dealing with the Devil in his own way, with the promise of happy endings for 2 of the 3 before the book is done. Aunie's friend Mary at school.

I had to go read the AAR Review just to see how far off my own thoughts were from theirs, and this time we are almost completely in agreement, even though that reviewer gave it a B+ and I'm going with 5 stars. I do like the character of Aunie quite a lot (like the AAR Reviewer) and I agree also that Andersen creates a family atmosphere for her characters in many of her novels that is touching and realistic.

Getting Lucky by Susan Andersen *****

Oh man, can this woman write good stuff or what??? Getting Lucky is book #2 in the "Marine" series, and our hero is Zach, whom we met in the first book Head Over Heels. He was Coop's friend who came in for the wedding (right? for the wedding? or earlier?) whatever. (I cannot believe I don't already have book 4, Coming Undone, in my PBS queue...)

Zach is single, rich and still in the Marines. Zach has a younger sister that he feels responsible for. Zach's upbringing was an emotional wasteland, with 2 doctor parents who raised him to the age of 11 in Africa, then sent him and his infant sister Glynnis off to live with Stateside grandparents while they stayed to provide medical care to the less fortunate. Parents and grandparents are now dead, and sister is coming into her inheritance in a few months. Zach's big fear for his sister: gold diggers taking all her money because she's such an easy touch and pretty dang irresponsible too. And now he's on a month leave and he's gonna straighten Glynnis out.

Lily met Glynnis and developed a friendship. Glynnis, soft touch that she is, invites Lily to live with her in Zach's mansion temporarily, complete with lease (at Lily's insistence). Lily is a chef who works on corporate yachts, going on several day to several week cruises, and is between living arrangements. Lily is actually trying to help Glynnis - she teaches her to reconcile her bank statement, and tries to help her economize. Then Zach shows up - Lily's there in his house, and Glynnis is gone.

What's Zach to think but that Lily is sponging off Glynnis? Especially when he finds out Glynnis has left with her fiancé David to meet his parents - a fiancé Zach is sure is another gold digger.

Of course it kinda messes with his head that, while he immediately takes a dislike to Lily and wants her out of the house, he also has an immediate attraction to her. Man. I hate when that happens!!

Lily finds him boorish, dictatorial, rude and, dammit, sexy as hell. Man - I really hate when that happens!!

We have 2 suspense plots to deal with - first, a young Colombian native feels he has been insulted by Zach on a recent Marine mission, and he plans the old Eye for an Eye trick. His Colombian girlfriend apparently got hot and heavy with one of the Americans during the mission, consensually, but Miguel doesn't care about that old consenting part. He just wants revenge by taking Zach's woman. That's assuming Lily is Zach's woman - well, Miguel doesn't know that she's not. He's sorta not that smart, really.

Then, when Zach and Lily show up unannounced at the fiancé's mother's mansion (oh, yeah, by the way, David isn't a gold digger after all, being wealthy himself), they learn sister and fiancé have been kidnapped, and get involved in the rescue attempt. This part brings Coop and Ronnie into the picture, as well as the next Marine, John.

Once we get the kidnapping all solved, Zach takes Lily out on a real date, during which she makes mention of how they went about their relationship backwards. Ooops. Relationship? That sends Zach into a tailspin, because frankly he just hasn't taken a moment to think one way or the other about it, and now that the subject is on the table, he's got cold feet. It doesn't help that Lily admits she's in love with him - and his reaction is to backpedal, big time. That sends Lily out the restaurant door, right into Miguel's arms...

Once again, Andersen writes witty dialog, zany but believable plot twists - love the thing about Miguel not liking Lily's "chews" aka shoes! And have I mentioned about 5000 times how great her hot love scenes are? And sweaty stableboy - indeed.

The AAR Review mentions a "secondary romance" and that has me thumbing through the book looking around. Oh, wait, does she mean David's cousin Jessica and her husband Christopher? I didn't really consider it a secondary romance as much as just another story line. Maybe I'm wrong, because they do have a relationship issue and work it out, but it hardly earned the title "secondary" in my book. Parts of the story with David's family actually seemed a little superfluous, thrown in to sorta mix things up and confuse the reader about who the bad guy was. And frankly, I'm still mad at Zach for flirting with another woman while Lily does the dishes.

To be honest, as I read, I didn't find this book quite as endearing as Head Over Heels either. However I did finish with another smile on my face - her writing just manages to do that to me. The AAR reviewer didn't like Zach too much, but how can you not like a guy who finally admits he's ready for a relationship and in the next breath says, "So what do we do now? Do we get married?" Insert big grin here. 4.5 stars.

Just for Kicks by Susan Andersen *****

Yep. Another Winner for Miz Andersen! Whoo hoo! Stayed up, finished it smiling.

Just for Kicks is the sequel or rather book 2 in the series, with book 1 being Skintight. It's not a sequel in the sense that action for the characters in book 1 continue... Well, it does, but they aren't the main characters, so... Sequel? Series? I'm not sure.

Carly is Treena's neighbor and great friend - Treena was the heroine in Skintight, in case you're not following my train of thought. In Skintight, Treena meets Jax, and she has her best bud Carly and also her neighbor friends Mack and Ellen - both couples got their HEA in the first book. They form a sort of family that doesn't include the newest neighbor, Wolfgang Jones.

Wolf, as we lovingly call him, is a loner. His family - mom, dad, sister and him - moved around a lot when he was a kid, first as a military family, then as an employee at American embassies around the world. Although I have experience with moving overseas as a kid, I don't have any with government ties, so I'm wasn't familiar with this premise. He always felt like an outsider (wait - another outsider?) because his family wasn't part of the upper echelon in the embassy - they were the hired help. I guess this also affected his sister, because she had a kid whose father split, and has had a history of moving around from boyfriend to boyfriend ever since. The kid, Niklaus, has mostly depended on Wolf's mom, Nik's grandmother, to be the Rock of Gibraltar for him. Wolf's parents are now on the verge of retiring to Germany (currently living in Chile, so they are still wandering) and cannot take Niklaus with them. They don't feel like Niklaus's mother can take care of him - so they stick him with Uncle Wolf.

Whew. What a premise - now we have a loner outsider bachelor guardian to a teenage nephew. Imagine the infinite number of conflicts we can experience with this!

Niklaus is the bridge between Carly and Wolf - Niklaus befriends Carly, or maybe the other way around, partly because Carly's nice and partly because Niklaus likes animals and Carly has so many. And partly because Nik needs a friend.

Wolf works at the same casino that Treena and Carly dance at, in Security and Surveillance. His Dream Job is to be head of S&S in the corporate world and marry what Treena refers to as a Stepford Wife. It's his goal, something he has focused on since he left home at 18, and he is this close to realizing the dream. Unfortunately for him, he gets literally thrown into a situation with Carly - he's half dressed, having been awakened by the UPS guy with a package for her - she trips and falls into his arms, and well, there goes his inner beast, slamming his mouth onto hers. (ouch, lots of slamming lips in her books) Apparently he has an inner beast that needs tight leashing and when he's around her, he slips.

That would have been ok, it seems, but when he's fully awake and aware, his Dreams and Goals get pushed back into place every time he thinks of Niklaus, who needs guidance and a good role model. So once they actually breach the barrier, as it were, and sleep together, he's completely conflicted by the opposing desires - first, to realize his dream and second, to continue having the hottest sex in history with his next door neighbor. Classic "big head/little head" conflict. His big head continues to rule about 99% as long as he's in full control of his faculties.

Have I mentioned that Andersen writes incredibly hot love scenes? Whew. I should have read this in the winter, not in June aka Hell.

Andersen introduces an anonymous character early on - she speaks from his POV every now and then, giving us a glimpse into a psycho stalker brain, someone who is determined to make Carly his woman. All we know is that he's a janitor at the casino, and we wait for him to make his move...

Meanwhile, Wolf and Carly make a pact to be Friends with Benefits (or Bed Buddies) and actually develop a relationship outside the bedroom. They go, with the rest of their neighbor/family, to Niklaus's soccer games at school. He takes her to an animal shelter, and she invites him to a picnic for cancer survivors, all kids she has visited with her pets as a volunteer. He learns she has a college degree and she learns he isn't the cold monster she originally imagined. Just friends. With benefits. But no commitments, at Carly's insistence, since she swears she never wants to get married. Really.

Then Wolf is finally offered the corporate position he has been dreaming of and striving for - in Ohio. He hasn't told either Niklaus, who has now found friends and a girlfriend at school, or Carly about the offer, but a slip here and an eavesdrop there, and both find out. So it's the Big Misunderstanding - he's already decided he's not going to take it, but Nik and Carly both assume he did. Both are furious at the betrayal, and now we have some making up to do.

At this point, the psycho stalker kicks up his act a notch or two, forcing Carly and Wolf to work together. Andersen throws in a conflict that is actually pretty realistic but drives me nuts - the heroine has to defend herself because the hero can't get to her. He's frustrated and angry that the situation even happened, much less that he was powerless to act, and says the wrong thing which the heroine also takes the wrong way. The conflict I refer to (the realistic one) is NOT the psycho stalker attacking the heroine; the conflict is what the hero and the heroine say to each other afterwards. I mean, no it's not that realistic for the stalker to get into the elevator with her at the last minute! It's how the 2 people don't seem to be able to say what they really mean, and the other doesn't seem to understand what is said v. what is being felt that is so realistic. In the elevator, she leads the stalker on a little, trying to stall, then - being a dancer - she high kicks him in the balls. The hero sorta implies she acted rashly and shouldn't have, and she thinks he's saying she should not have defended herself so she's mad both that he wasn't able to stop the stalker and that he thinks what she did was wrong. Basically, I think the hero is just frustrated and says it wrong - he doesn't really mean she shouldn't have defended herself, but he isn't feeling what she wants him to be feeling: proud of her for doing it. And both are expecting some sort of relief/hug/something, but it doesn't happen, partly because he's been insistent they keep their work separate from their relationship. (Andersen used this same scenario in Baby, I'm Yours - very frustrating, but I think probably very realistic.)

Of course, it's romance, and we get our HEA - quite satisfactorily I might add. I smiled all through the epilogue, which takes place at Mack and Ellen's wedding.

5 stars, another keeper. If I didn't have almost 50 books TBR right now, I'd read the series again today.

All Shook Up by Susan Andersen *****

First I have to say I think Susan Andersen is now my favorite author. Or maybe it's just because I just read another book I loved!!

Next I have to say, thank you John Lippincott for suggesting I blog, because now that I have a place to write down my book thoughts, maybe I'll remember them a little bit longer. I just browsed a PBS member's book list, and she had several LaVyrle Spencer books on it. I couldn't remember whether or not I already had them, and had to look at my Spencer book list. Not only did I already order them, I'd already READ them and couldn't even remember the plot.

Maybe I should update my word doc lists with plot synopses as well to jog my memory...

OK - now to All Shook Up. The heroine Dru is an orphan, raised by her aunt and uncle, and she's also a single mother as the result of a love affair in college. The boy's father split when he found out she was pregnant, and has never been heard from again. Now - on a side bar here - I wondered if in the whole year they were lovers, did she never meet his family?? Or what? But never mind that, he's out of the picture completely.

Her aunt and uncle own half of a thriving resort in East Washington state - the other owner was her great aunt, now deceased, who willed it to a former foster child, the hero J.D. Our hero is one of those bad boys, moved from foster home to foster home, rough life, bad friends - but his encounter with the great aunt, while brief, brought him two things: self respect BUT instilled in him a great distrust of do-gooders - due to a Big Misunderstanding. The great aunt apparently accused him of stealing something from her while he was living there, and he ran off and never had contact with her again. She wrote him letters that he never opened but that he carried with him. Of course, the item was found, not stolen, and she apologized but he never knew. And now he has the guilt of her giving him this half ownership, but the mistrust of the other owners.

Plus, he needs mothering - and when he first meets Dru and her boy, he sees a life he never had, the kind of mothering he wished for. Not to mention apparently she's easy on the eyes, and he develops an attraction for her even though she's not His Type.

As I write this, the characters sound oh-so-familiar. But as always with romance novels, it's the journey, not the formula, that makes it. And I loved this journey!

Dru is also attracted to him, and it frankly makes her edgy. Ok, it makes her downright bitchy to him - but she's not so stubborn that she can't back off and be polite. That makes him even more distrustful - what's up with that, he thinks! But pretty quickly she realizes that his behavior is covering up his true feelings - not just of the attraction, but his feelings about friendship, family, love - the things he hasn't had a good role model for and doesn't know how to develop and keep. This all seemed very real to me.

There's another misunderstanding: JD's friend from Seattle who has a secret that he thinks JD knows about. And he's out to keep JD from ever telling the secret - or anything else ever again.

There's a secondary romance - the aunt and uncle, who are still hot for each other, although the aunt is now going through menopause and having all the bad symptoms - mood swings, hot flashes. Oh and a third, not well developed romance between Dru's 2 best friends. I think the best friends are just an excuse to get JD's hackles up, though, although it's nice to have the heroine have other friends...

Of course there's a totally satisfying HEA - and when the kid asks JD if he can call him Dad after they're married, well, I for one found it very heart warming (and so did JD). Five stars!

today's book: Shadow Dance by Susan Andersen *****

Shadow Dance by Susan Andersen.

Wow. After all the mediocre to bad reviews I read, I sorta wasn't looking forward to reading this. Wow. I have to say, I loved this book. I wonder if reading bad reviews set me up to expect it would be awful, making me think it was actually BETTER than it really is?? You know, how you're expecting bad so when it's not bad, you think it's great? I got myself to like yogurt that way - I just kept telling myself it would taste awful, then I'd take a taste and it wasn't too bad.

The reviews said: no chemistry between the protagonists; slow to start.

I say: the chemistry was there for me from the get-go, and each thought about the other practically all the time, to the point of distraction. She wondered about the true man behind the cop mask he put up; he wondered about the true woman behind the rich-girl-good-manners mask she wore. A lot. Constantly. Now, a lot of this was told from each character's POV as what they were thinking, and not in dialog. And sometimes a page or two of Thinking would be between lines of dialog - to be honest, a couple of times I had to go back to see what the previous line was, because by the time we got to the reply I'd forgotten.

More than one review remarked about his Scots accent, asking how he could be American and have that, what was his backstory, they didn't get to know him.

I say: did they read the same book?? Sheesh - it was said several times he was originally from Glasgow (which is in Scotland) and raised in an orphanage. And that he didn't bother to try to Americanize his speech. I didn't need a guidebook to figure out he had moved to the US as an adult and become a citizen, since he did say several times he was American. There was a lot about his being raised in an orphanage, trotted out for families to see, but then being too old to be adopted. Again, didn't need a guidebook to figure out - uh, his parents were dead, apparently no other family. We learned he was shy and found it hard to talk to women, that he found it hard to make friends. I feel like we learned a lot about him. And hey - I love a Scots accent!!

The AAR review has the heroine's name wrong, and details about the story wrong - really, can't they read the book before they post a review? Another review puts the story in Las Vegas - uh, it was Reno. Another mentions that the romance doesn't even happen until the end - hmmm, the first kiss happens about half-way through, not uncommon at all, in my experience. And he moves in with her about 2/3 of the way into the book. Moves in meaning Sleeping Together.

Another reviewer commented she couldn't figure out what the hero looked like - well, he was tall (over 6' 4", it said), wore glasses, had a great butt, looked like a Soloflex ad in jeans, sandy brown hair, gray eyes, white crooked teeth - I'm not sure what else she needed to know - birth marks?

Well, I don't know why I'm going on and on about it - it's ok for me to like a book that a lot of other people don't. Unless I'm only liking it in reaction to their not liking it? And yet, all those glowing reviews for Lisa Kleypas - my god, Dreaming of You came in 2nd in the Top 100 - and I thought it was mediocre and boring! Is it me??

I guess I'll have to do a re-read on Shadow Dance to see if I still think it's good.

Oh - the story: show girl dancer Amanda comes from an upper class family that she ran away from after high school - she lived in NY, making it on her own until she came into her trust fund at age 25 (she's now 28); she moved to Reno and now has a permanent position dancing 6 days a week. She owns a triplex, and the 2 other tenants are her co-workers - that is, until a serial killer murders 1 of them. Tristan MacLaughlin (bio above) is a Seattle cop brought in to run the task force to track down the killer - he has the background and experience no one on the Reno department has.

Their first meeting is when Tristan arrives in town and Amanda is at the morgue to identify the body. Personally, I thought the attraction started right then, and given their personalities each has a reason to sublimate the attraction (well, in my mind anyway).

Because Amanda now has an empty apartment, the other tenant Rhonda suggests Tristan live there, so he's now around a lot in addition to working on the case. Well - the suspense part is finding the serial killer and putting him out of commission. The romance part is Amanda and Tristan giving in to their mutual attraction and getting over the obstacles, mostly in their own personalities, thrown up that keep them apart. Basically each of them has an ingrained ability to freeze everyone else out - breaking down the ice shields is what finally brings them together. Even though she breaks down first, after the killer attacks her, her shield goes back up in a big way - and Tristan goes back to Seattle and has to wait her out. I thought Andersen did a terrific job of showing Tristan's vulnerabilities and insecurities about being rejected.

Some of the reviewers remarked about the plot - serial killer stalking the heroine (which isn't exactly true since he doesn't really target her til close to the end) - is cliched and over-used. Hmmmm, I actually can't say I've seen this plot used that much, although every romance I've read has the plot where there's a hero and a heroine who have to overcome some obstacle or 2 before they can get together romantically and live Happily Ever After. After all, that is what makes it a Romance... All these plots are the same - it's the journey - how the author gets them over the obstacle - that makes the book for me.

Oh I don't know why I'm letting this bother me so!! I wish I could be more eloquent, could write coherent and insightful reviews so I could post one that rebuts all the others!! It's almost as if I feel the need to, what? show my opinion matters? Yeah in a way, it's like there's something wrong with me that I like this book where so many others didn't - I'm not really standing up for the author, but for myself.

jeez I'm chewing on this like a dog on a bone. I gotta give it up. and go to bed. 5 stars.

Be My Baby by Susan Andersen *****

Be My Baby, Susan Andersen.

I'm on a Susan Andersen kick, and I think Be My Baby is my favorite so far. For one thing, it takes place in New Orleans (pre-Katrina). And Andersen pretty much got it right - the accents, Irish Channel and Yat, and how they ate and generally the mood of the city. She got the French Quarter pretty much right - well, Bourbon Street anyway. Ok there were a couple of things I thought didn't fit (for one thing, the 11 o'clock news? Who has 11 o'clock news - maybe the East coast? For another, there are no tomatoes in jambalaya, really!) Her characters were fun, even the villain(s) had me laughing. I mean, the Panty Snatcher, really! And as usual, her love scenes are hot.

The heroine is Juliet, a blue blood Bostonian, in New Orleans to open an exclusive hotel in what was formerly a Garden District mansion. Her family owns the hotel along with a string of other high class hotels, and this is her first chance to show what she can do in the family business. The hero is Beau Dupree, a Yat cop, assigned to be her body guard after she receives a threatening letter about the hotel. Ok, it's more of a warning than a threat, from someone interested in keeping the mansion historically preserved and not made into a hotel. But her Daddy has some leverage because of his wealth, and the police department has a politically aware Acting Chief who makes Beau do it even though it seems ridiculous.

Beau had to raise his sisters after their parents' deaths - this is a scenario I've seen before (SEP's First Lady, anyone?) - so he's had his fill of family life and is looking forward to some bachelor fantasy life that doesn't include an uptight society Yankee. Juliet gets a whiff of life without Daddy and Grandmother telling her what to do, and loses some of her stiffness, but still doesn't fit the fantasies Beau has, or does she?

Beau spends some time trying to get Juliet to have him removed from the job - until someone shoots at her (or him?) and he decides it is a credible threat after all. Now he's on her like white on rice. Well, once they're living in each other's pockets, what else can you expect to happen? Immediate attraction.

I did have to laugh at myself (well, I laughed a lot during this book - she used some great lines that had me howling out loud - like Beau's t-shirt with the slogan Call 911 and Make a Cop Come) when suddenly I was aware that during their first, uh, intimate encounter, no mention was made of any kind of birth control - and then the hero is going, uh-oh, no condom... I've gotten so used to that being an issue in contemporary romance, I guess, that I raised an eyebrow, thinking "how irresponsible was that?" And hey, I was right.

There were lots of happily-ever-afters in this story, for Juliet and Beau, for Beau's sisters and his partner, even for Juliet's assistant - that was fun too. (sure beats killing off the secondary characters, like Marsha Canham did in Blood of Roses! What a shock.)

I kept being reminded of my own grandmother when she described hers - well, not exactly the same, but yeah - she corrected our pronunciations (elocution, anyone?) from "git" to "g-eh -t" and "pin" to "p-eh-n", and tried to make us be ladies with better posture and manners and all that crap. I guess since we did have parents who weren't quite as adamant about it, her lessons didn't have the same impact. Plus we weren't blue blood anyway.

well, as for Be My Baby - definitely 5 stars and a keeper.

Baby Don't Go by Susan Andersen ****

Baby, Don't Go by Susan Andersen. Romance, some funny moments, a bit of suspense.

Andersen has a tendency, apparently, to write cop books - in this one, the heroine is the (ex) cop Daisy who is now a Security Specialist aka bodyguard. The hero is her former step-brother Nick who also took her virginity 9 years earlier, and is now a photographer who captured something he shouldn't in a photo, and needs security to keep him safe while he deals with the hired goons trying to get the negatives.

It really isn't that squicky that he was her step-brother (former); their parents had already divorced and she was of age when The Deflowering happened 9 years before. Her memory: it was a passionate but Wham Bam Thank You Ma'am moment that broke her heart; his memory: he felt too much, told her he loved her in the heat of the moment, panicked and ran.

This is my 2nd Andersen book - the first 1 I read was Baby, I'm Yours, which was lots of fun and I even read it twice. I'm glomming her backlist now. She writes fairly implausible scenarios that you go with because they're a romp, and to be honest, her love scenes are Hot, which makes you keep reading. Who can resist a hero that decides he's in love with the heroine and keeps telling her over and over?? 4 stars, not 5, because frankly towards the end, it got a little tooooo implausible and I was thinking: The whole I'll-do-anything-even-sell-my-soul-to-the-devil-for-my-sister thing went a little too far. I mean, what she did was really wrong, and, well, slightly contrived.

By the by, my lips are feeling a little virtually bruised from all the lips slamming together - I seem to be reading a lot of lip-slamming scenes in several books. Sigh.

A wrap-up of April's reading and...

I am now on the audio book Dragonfly in Amber. I think I truly managed to quell my obsession with All Things Jamie-and-Claire, and hmmm - I'm not getting through it as fast as I would have thought. And because I'm determined to get through them in order, I now have 2 audible.com credits which I'm not planning to redeem. I did get LaVyrle Spencer's audio of That Camden Summer, but have not listened to it.

What did I read in the past month? Well - using the AAR Top 100 Romance Novels list, I decided to start reading Lisa Kleypas. And now that I've read Prince of Dreams (a while back), Someone to Watch Over Me, Then Came You and Dreaming of You (the #2 in the Top 100), all I can say is: IS THAT ALL THERE IS? Then Came You was filled with bone-jarring typos - what a poor editing job! The hero practically raped the heroine more than once. The heroine decided to knock him out and tie him up - not for raping her, but to keep him from marrying her sister. Why? Well, mainly because the heroine is meddling. The sister - actually in love with someone else - wants to marry the hero anyway because that is how it's done. The author doesn't prove to me that the marriage shouldn't take place, that the hero will do anything worse than not being in love with his fiancee which could change... But then there wouldn't be a story, right? And to that I say, and who cares?

Someone posted either a review or a forum post talking about the Laugh Out Loud moments in this book. Laugh out loud at someone getting knocked unconscious and tied up? I Don't Get It. Am I just a curmudgeon or do I just not like the popular Lisa Kleypas' writing??

Dreaming of You was better than Then Came You - fewer typos. But she comes nowhere near Loretta Chase or Jo Goodman in prose, the ability to use words to draw a picture, evoke an emotion, show the reader. And the hero Derek Craven that everyone loves so much? Me - not so much. Well, she does have him say some wonderful things that do not make up for the lack of... well, whatever, lack of story line, character portrayal.

Silly me, I've already ordered several more Kleypas books - well, I'll muddle through. To be sure it wasn't me just being contrary, I did re-reads of Morning Glory (love it), Captives of the Night (love it); and a couple of Goodman books (the sequels to Season to be Sinful, which is loaned out to Susanne, or I'd have re-read it as well). And still loved them. And there's a major difference in the style.

Also read this month: Susan Anderson, Baby, I'm Yours - a contemporary. 4 stars! A bounty hunter mistakes an identical twin, one of whom is jumping bail, and drags her across the country by Greyhound bus while she tries to convince him she's the wrong twin. She sets it up well enough: the wrong twin had a vacation from her job and was supposed to be in Europe. Unfortunately, there was some issue with her plane ticket and she didn't get to go at the very last minute. The one issue I had with this was how hard it was for me to believe that identical twins raised together would be so incredibly different in education, accent, manner of speaking, etc. I don't know that much about twins, but from what I've heard/read, they are very close, even having their own language as children. But I went with the leap, and enjoyed the ride.

I finished Ceremony in Death (JD Robb) and Vengeance in Death. I took a break between them, and did appreciate Vengeance more that way. So I plan a break between each of them, and now have about 6 waiting.

I read all 4 of the Jo Goodman Compass Club books: Everything I Ever Wanted, Let Me Be The One, All I Ever Needed and Beyond a Wicked Kiss. I gave them each 4 stars but did not put them on my Keeper/Re-Read list. I did like them but wasn't consumed by them.

I read 2 LaVyrle Spencer books - wow! Another new keeper/re-read author. The 2 I read (That Camden Summer, Morning Glory) are early 20th century and rural America, and both beta/mild-mannered heroes. In fact, That Camden Summer doesn't even have an explicit sex scene (shock) but still the tension created was enough to make it incredible. I need to explore her books more - apparently she's retired. I rented the movie Morning Glory, with Christopher Reeve. I liked it ok - and actually they stuck pretty close to the book, leaving out the part where the hero goes to WWII, and changing a couple of minor points. Since I had just read the book the day before, it was hard to compare them - I had the story so firmly in my head, it was hard to say if the movie covered something or I just knew it. I can see where, although a picture is worth 1000 words, those words are not necessarily the ones the author would have chosen and so someone seeing the movie may miss some of the subtle things going on, especially in their minds. I love how Spencer had the hero and heroine have such similar thoughts although they didn't share them or even let them show on their faces. This can't just be shown by even good actors - you need to see or hear the words Spencer wrote to appreciate it.

I picked up 4 used books at Hastings: A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott (4 stars) and 2 by Elizabeth Lowell, Always Time To Die (4 stars) and Beautiful Dreamer (3 stars) as well as a Nora Roberts, Blue Smoke. Lowell is an author that sometimes I love and sometimes not so much. Sometimes the same treatment she gives one story just doesn't seem to work in the next one. Sometimes she just drums and drums some point over and over into the reader's head and I just want to say OK WE GET IT PLEASE DON'T SAY THIS AGAIN. Beautiful Dreamer was like that - ok, she loves her ranch and it has no water. Got it, stop driving it into me. I did do a re-read another Lowell book (which one? cannot recall). I gave Blue Smoke 4 stars - liked it a lot. It's about a woman arson detective and her journey from child watching her parents' business burn down to what she is today. Her hero sees her and is in love at first sight, even though it's years before they meet - it's a nice treatment of the hero. Another mostly beta hero - and I liked it.

So I read 14 or 15 new books in April (I marked 3 of them as being read on 5/2, and I think I read 2 of those in April.) I don't keep track of re-reads, but I think I did 4-5. And the only audio books have been Outlander and now I'm in part 3 of Dragonfly in Amber, both re-listens.