The private life of a private eye

REVIEWS BY SANDY HUSEBY

David Anderson was just an ordinary hard-at-work hero, struggling to make a living as a hardboiled detective writer, when romance author Julie Kenner reached into the cosmic miasma of characters to pair him up with a desperate client searching for the other half of her lost weekend. Jacey Wilder believes finding her mystery man is vital to getting her life together before she turns 30, but David, the writer making ends meet as a detective, keeps getting in her way. As does a thug named Reggie and a decidedly unpleasant search for a cache of missing diamonds. In Kenner's Nobody But You, Jacey struggles to organize her career, as well as her love life, despite all the distractions to her plan. Meanwhile, her best friend Tasha and David's Aunt Millie have plenty of suggestions for speeding up the romance. Kenner dishes up a delicious romp into madcap mayhem in this rollicking romantic mystery. Nobody But You is San Diego sunshine at its best—glowing, warm, impossible to say good-bye to before the last delightful page.


Looking for temp love

The absolute last thing Dena Bailey wants in her well-orchestrated life is a serious romance in Pamela Bauer's The Man Upstairs. Pro hockey player Quinn Sterling isn't looking for permanence either, so when he moves in upstairs at 14 Valentine Place, the pair makes time in their hectic lives for a little light romancing. When Quinn becomes temporary guardian to his best friend's orphaned children, he and Dena are forced to re-evaluate their attitudes toward their part-time romance and their long-term ambitions. Dena can no longer bury her emotions about her mother's abandonment in long hours of work at Delaney Design and her own freelancing. When they first met, the attraction was swift, compelling, simultaneous. Quinn faces-off with his greatest challenge off the ice when he decides to build his own team with the woman—and children—he's grown to love. But Dena needs special persuading and patience. Bauer's enduring popularity as a series writer is reinforced by this heartwarming story of two singles who discover love is a better team sport than either could have imagined.


An affair to remember

Suspense novelist Scott Lawrence returns to his coastal Texas roots seeking a cure for his writer's block and the drought in his personal life in Julie Ortolon's Lead Me On. Pearl Island Inn proprietor Allison St. Claire would be the perfect diversion, if she weren't so darned nice, so milk-and-cookies sweet. Scott is game for fun, of course. The "c" word—commitment— is not in his extensive vocabulary. But beneath Alli's good-girl exterior is a heart as passionate as her lavender and black lace. Whether the best-selling author can stand the emotions Alli unleashes makes for a romance that shimmers with pure magic as lustrous as the force that haunts the book's island locale. A mesmerizing treat. From the author of the popular Falling for You (St Martin's 2002).


Hot chocolate

Mia has invested three years of her life in Miles, but marriage does not appear to be on the horizon. It's a subject he avoids as if it were poison. Then it's cruise time in Marissa Monteilh's The Chocolate Ship. Away from home and convention, Mia and her girlfriends are ready to cut loose, and the cruise ship delivers. Relationships are tested and turbulent, while the passion flows as hot as Caribbean nights and as spicy as the food banquet the exotic cruise ship has to offer. As Mia surrenders to the promises of those nights, she discovers that Miles is the one port of call she wants to dock with forever. But look out, there may be storms ahead. A sassy, spicy feast for the spirit . . . when that spirit is heat-seeking and ready for any adventure.


Sandy Huseby writes and reviews from her homes in Fargo, North Dakota, and lakeside in northern Minnesota.

© 2003 ProMotion, inc.
www@bookpage.com