There's more action than romance in this thrill-a-minute roller coaster, but as always, Ryan (His Cowboy Heart, 2017, etc.)...
Can romance blossom in the aftermath of trauma? A movie star and an undercover agent try to find out in Ryan's new Montana Heat series.
When A-list actress Ashley Swan goes missing, Hollywood assumes she's taking time away from the spotlight. A year later, Beck “Trigger” Cooke, an undercover DEA agent, finds her and a little boy in the snow outside his isolated Montana house. He recognizes Ashley immediately and soon learns that the boy is named Adam and his mother was killed by the same man who'd been holding Ashley captive, beating and starving her. Beck begins the slow process of nursing the actress back to health and guiding her through the process of reclaiming her life. Part of that will involve figuring out how to wrangle the media circus that surrounds her on her own terms. Ashley's captor, Brice Mooney, is also a celebrity, a talk show host—one with a dossier of blackmail on a lot of powerful people. As if that weren't enough, Beck has been laying low to avoid a drug dealer who blames him for the death of his cousin. Being with Ashley and Adam makes Beck think that maybe he is ready to give up being an undercover agent before the darkness of associating with murderers and drug dealers consumes him. He allows himself to be photographed with Ashley on the way to the hospital, despite the danger of being recognized. What Beck and Ashley don't know is that while they're taking steps to put the man responsible for her kidnapping away, a vengeance-fueled drug dealer is growing closer to finding Beck's true identity. When the two villains team up to catch Ashley and Beck, their worlds collide in an action-packed climax straight out of a summer blockbuster.
There's more action than romance in this thrill-a-minute roller coaster, but as always, Ryan (His Cowboy Heart, 2017, etc.) doesn't disappoint.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-269719-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
Roberts is the perfect perpetual-romance machine. She churns out an almost inhuman number each year; she meets an annual March deadline for her hardcovers (this one even has the same number of pages as last year's bestselling Montana Sky). And each is lively, sexy, and well researched. Her latest concerns three siblings (the Hathaways) who find lovers and strained relationships while a homicidal madman is threatening their safety. The three live in a beautiful white gothic on the Georgia Sea Island of Lost Desire, which they've turned into an inn. Brian, the eldest—tall, cute, and morose—runs the establishment and is chef of its five-star kitchen. (His father Sam can't understand how a man can enjoy creating a perfect meringue and still prefer women for sex.) Brian fights halfheartedly against the amorous advances of Kirby, the pretty Yankee doctor who runs the island's clinic; the two eventually end up locked in an embrace against her refrigerator door. Meanwhile, the youngest sib, Alexa Hathaway—sexy Lexy, the island princess with the gypsy hair—has failed at acting in New York and come home to waitress and throw a few tantrums. She fights halfheartedly against the honorable intentions of childhood buddy Gift Verdon, who's good with his hands and doesn't let her get away with much. Finally, there is Jo Ellen, a world-famous photographer who's returned to Desire after a nervous breakdown and is fighting a losing battle against empathic architect Nathan Delaney. Twenty years earlier, the Hathaways' mother, Annabelle, had disappeared, abandoning her family—or so it seemed. Now someone is stalking the family, having even sent Jo Ellen a picture of her mother, dead and naked. As usual, the romance is better than the weird violence. There's not much suspense here, but it's good to see that heroines are becoming gutsier and heroes better in the kitchen.
Pub Date: March 17, 1997
ISBN: 0-399-14240-1
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
A classic wacky rom-com and an ideal summer read.
An Instagram mishap leads to a fake engagement announcement for a struggling jeweler…and when sales spike, she decides to play along.
Eliza Roth spent her childhood dreaming of owning a store, and with her sister, Sophie, she's able to make her dream come alive in the form of Brooklyn Jewels. When Eliza finds out via Instagram that her no-good ex is engaged, she indulges in one of her favorite ways to take out her frustration—creating fake engagement announcements for herself, using the beautiful rings she sells in the store, complete with cheesy, gag-inducing captions. But when Eliza wakes up to a flurry of Instagram activity, she realizes that she accidentally posted her fake announcement, including an eye-roll–worthy caption: “They say when you know, you know…and I know I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” Eliza and Sophie are both mortified, but the two of them quickly see that all this online attention is bringing in major sales. And with an upcoming rent hike that means they might not be able to stay in their current building, plus Sophie and her wife’s expensive fertility treatments, they need the money. When a wedding venue reaches out to offer their facility to Eliza free of charge, she pounces on it. All the publicity from a highly Instagrammable wedding will surely bring in the money they need. The only problem? There’s no groom. She sets off to find a fake fiance in a bar and ends up stumbling upon Blake, a fellow jeweler who seems picture perfect. When they start dating, Eliza doesn’t tell him about her plan…and as they grow closer, she thinks it’s too late to come clean. But when Eliza starts to develop a real connection to her bartender friend, Raj, things get a lot more complicated. While some aspects of the story strain credulity (Blake frequently says he isn’t on Instagram, but it seems unlikely that he or one of his friends wouldn’t encounter some of the online press about Eliza’s “engagement”), the story is so fun and fast paced that it hardly matters. Orenstein’s (Playing With Matches, 2018) writing is quick, witty, and compulsively readable even when Eliza’s desperate actions evoke cringes. Although the story is over the top, the feelings are real, and readers will be able to relate to Eliza’s struggle to find her soul mate in the age of apps and social media.
A classic wacky rom-com and an ideal summer read.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9821-1779-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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