I read three Harlequin/Mills & Boon titles over the past week, all from different lines.
My favourite was The Heat is On by Jill Shalvis, which is an August release from Harlequin Blaze. It’s already on sale from the eHarlequin website, both in print and as an ebook.
Blurb: Oh, dear. Bella Manchelli is so not having a good day. First, she’s deliciously exhausted from last night’s sizzling one-night stand. Second, there’s a (gulp) dead body at her back door. Third…um, that scrumptious one-nighter is at her front door… and he’s wearing a badge!
Police Officer Jacob Madden is all about duty. Until he shows up looking for a homicide…and runs right into last night’s slice of sexy heaven! Damn, he just can’t think straight when he’s around Bella. All he wants to do is lick her up one side and down the other….
Can duty and smoking-hot sex blend for a while? Definitely! Until Jacob discovers that several of the guys Bella’s dated have turned up dead. Jacob loves being around Bella. But is he ready to be used as target practice?
My Thoughts: This is a fun story! As usual with Jill Shalvis’ writing, the sexual chemistry is sizzling. The hero is a cop. Although I’m not a huge fan of cops in real life (there’s no particular reason, I swear!), cop heroes tend to work for me in romance novels. The heroine is flighty, but she doesn’t stray into TSTL territory.
With the notable exception of a melodramatic rescue scene towards the end, the suspense plot worked for me. Despite the rising body count, it’s amusing, and made me laugh out loud on several occasions. My Grade: B
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When I blogged about the Mills & Boon Modern Heat line, a couple of people recommended the Australian author, Kelly Hunter. Red-Hot Renegade is her latest release. It’s not due out in the US until next year, but it already available from Mills & Boon in print or as an ebook. (Note: I don’t do affiliate links on my blog. If I link to an etailer, it’s because a book is hard-to-find.)
Blurb: In desperate need of protection, Jianne Xang-Bennett reluctantly turns to her estranged husband, martial arts expert Jacob Bennett, for help. But there are problems: they’ve been separated for twelve years and cannot be in the same room together without arguing or ripping each other’s clothes off – sometimes at the same time!
My Thoughts: When I realised this book is set in Singapore and features an Australian hero and a Chinese heroine, I knew I had to read it. It’s actually the fifth book in the Bennett Family series, but it stands alone very well.
There’s a lot to like in this book. Jake is a martial arts expert, which is an unusual profession for a romance hero. Jianne is independently wealthy, and has far more money than Jake can ever hope to make. I loved the role reversal here. It made a nice change from the usual billionaire hero and his far less well-off heroine.
Jake and Jianne spend a little too much time fighting and making up for my taste, but I very much approved of the conclusion to the stalker storyline. I’d read more books by Kelly Hunter. My Grade: B-
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I’ve become a fan of Harlequin’s SuperRomance line. Unfortunately, The Groom Came Back by Abby Gaines is not one of my favourites.
Blurb: Typical. It takes Dr. Jack Mitchell eight years to pull himself away from his terribly important career abroad and come home for a divorce. And then he doesn’t even know who she is! Sure, Callie Summers—excuse me, Mitchell—was a gawky schoolgirl when Jack rescued her from a nasty family situation. But that’s no excuse for the man not to recognize his own wife.
And now the gorgeous neurosurgeon thinks he’s going to hightail it out of Tennessee with his final decree in hand. Uh-uh. Callie isn’t letting him off quite so easily. Not when she, to her utter dismay, is finding him so irresistible.
Irresistible enough to get him to tie the knot again?
My Thoughts: The problem for me was the hero. I found him unbearably arrogant, and I felt he wasn’t sufficiently redeemed by the end of the story for me to want him to have a HEA. The heroine worked better for me, even though I found her too passive at times. I just wanted her to end up with a nicer guy than the one she got. As I liked the author’s voice, I really wanted to like this book more than I did. Despite my reservations about this book, I probably will give her another try. My Grade: C
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