Western’s compelling romantic novel tells the story of Katie Smythe, a successful London antique shop owner, and her courtship by, and marriage to wealthy playboy Declan Black, before shifting into a thriller when Katie is kidnapped for ransom.
After discovering that her long-time boyfriend has been cheating on her, Katie decides to take a break from romantic relationships. Soon after, millionaire art gallery owner Declan Black walks into her shop and Katie questions her resolve. Declan, despite forever having shunned the idea of having a serious relationship, can’t get Katie out of his head and asks her to dinner. As Katie and Declan begin to see each other, he denies his feelings to himself, insisting he isn’t a one-woman man and nearly sabotaging their love by having a well-publicized affair with Alicia Mays, a beautiful heiress and sculptress. Katie is a sympathetic, believable heroine, torn by her growing feelings for an almost-too-perfect man and the distrust she feels for his elite world. Declan only recognizes that he has fallen in love with Katie after she breaks up with him and leaves town for the wedding of her brother, Michael. When she returns, Declan asks her to marry him. While following the romance novel formula, Western presents enough obstacles and chemistry to the couple’s love that their union feels well earned. Friends and foils provide an interesting backdrop, and naturalistic dialogue moves the story along. When Katie and Declan travel to Turkey for their honeymoon, she is kidnapped, and Declan and Michael, as well as Katie’s own bravery, are her only chances for escape. Western plots this part of the novel at comfortably swift pace. Clunky point-of-view shifts occasionally get in the way of the narrative, but the book ties up the pieces for a satisfying ending This urbane, sexy romance novel smoothly transitions from romance to thriller.
Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-1456798604
Page Count: 344
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Though Roberts (The Reef, 1998, etc.) never writes badly, her newest mystery romance is more inconsistent than most. Little Olivia MacBride, daughter of two golden Hollywood superstars, wakes up one night to see her coked-up father holding her mother’s bloody body, a scissors in his hand. After her dad is led off to prison, Liv is sent to live with her grandparents, who run a successful lodge in the Olympic rain forest on the Washington coast—a location far across the continent from the Maryland shores of Roberts’s Quinn trilogy, but one that allows her to explore another place of life-giving scenic wonder. And when Liv grows up and becomes a naturalist/guide, she gets to take us on lots of eye-dazzling tours. Into her sheltered paradise comes Noah Brady, the son of the police detective who arrested Liv’s father and has been her friend since childhood. Noah has grown up to be a bestselling true-crime writer, and, against Liv’s will, he wants to write his next book about the MacBride murder case. (Liv’s dad, about to be released from San Quentin, is dying of brain cancer.) Though Liv fights her attraction to Noah, he’s a persistent boy, and on an extended and very sexy camping trip, the two become lovers. Meanwhile, the real murderer, whose identity will probably be obvious to most readers, leaves his own trail of violence up to Washington and a final prime-evil shoot-out. Added to Roberts’s poorly drawn mystery and her interlude of swell lusty love is her usual theme of how wounded children and inner children are healed and nurtured by good nuclear families. If the conventional wisdom is true, that romance readers never tire of reruns of the same old same old, then Roberts won’t have disappointed them.
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-399-14470-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
An entertaining page-turner.
Terri Rayburn is devastated that her perfect man belongs to someone else, but once Nate Taggert realizes that Terri's the one for him, her complicated past still stands in the way of their being together.
Terri is attracted to Nate the moment she lays eyes on him, and soon they fall into an easy partnership at the Virginia lake resort she runs with her father. Nate is upfront about being engaged to the mayor’s daughter, Stacy, but she’s in Europe for a few weeks, and it quickly becomes clear to Terri that Nate and Stacy aren’t a great match. However, Terri, whose mother left when she was 2, has always had a problematic relationship with the citizens of Summer Hill. Since Leslie disappeared, the town gossip has made sure everyone remembers her as a promiscuous vixen, a label which tainted Terri as she got older and made her look like a problem when, as Nate begins to understand, she was really a victim. It’s clear to everyone around them that they are falling in love, but even as Nate realizes it himself, Terri is adamant that they can’t be together. She won’t steal him from the popular Stacy because it would mean she’d never be able to live in Summer Hill, and she won’t abandon her father. Deveraux spins an intriguing and unorthodox romance, continuing her Summer Hill branch of the Taggert/Montgomery series with two characters who have some unique, interesting obstacles in their paths and navigate through them with secrets uncovered and old wounds healed. The story is well plotted, though Nate is unnecessarily oblivious sometimes and the book takes an unexpected swing into romantic suspense territory in the last quarter. The solved mystery resolves Nate and Terri’s conflict, though the villain’s motivations seem a little cartoonish.
An entertaining page-turner.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7783-5124-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
