Today’s Steals and Deals at AAR…..

We didn’t love The Ideal Man but readers do. In our review we wrote:

Dr. Ellie Sullivan is a child prodigy trauma surgeon who happens to witness the shooting of an FBI agent during an operation that goes bad. The criminals that the FBI had hoped to apprehend that day, Cal and Erika Landry, are known arms dealers that have thus far managed to evade jail time by eliminating the witnesses testifying against them — either by threats, or violence.

Ellie didn’t actually get a good enough look to testify, but after the police intercept a hit man in her hospital’s emergency room, FBI agent Max Daniels doesn’t want to take any chances, so he follows Ellie to her hometown in South Carolina, to protect her. Ellie is reluctantly home for her sister’s wedding — to Ellie’s ex-fiancé — when the last time she saw either of them was when she found them in bed together. Another complication: a violent stalker from her past has gone into hiding.

I mostly liked Ellie and Max. It felt a bit trite for Ellie to be a child prodigy; she could have been a great character without being The Best- gorgeous, a math genius, a fantastic surgeon. The stories about her getting private tutoring from college professors before she hit puberty were overkill. Other than that, though, she was a realistic character and a likable one. She and Max do have chemistry, and he’s a good if unoriginal character.

A lot is going on in this book. Between the contract out on Ellie’s life and the stalker, this book has plot enough for two novels, but half-asses them both. Neither storyline is fully realized, though they both have some potential. There is also a tacked-on secondary romance that, until the last 2 pages, felt more like the set-up for a second novel. I wish it was given its own novel, as it could have made a compelling read that way.

You can buy it here for 1.99.


Lisa really enjoyed You Should Smile More. In her review she wrote:

One part 9 to 5, one part romantic comedy, You Should Smile More is a funny, delightful romp about sweet revenge and even sweeter friendship.

Cat-loving Vanessa Blair is tired of being judged both for her outward appearance and her presumptive demeanor. Yes, the book’s titular phrase is often spoken to her even at her telemarketing job, where it ought not matter to anyone. She has a degree in linguistics, but majoring in Latin means that jobs are thinner on the ground than they ought to be. But Vanessa has dreams that reach beyond the switchboard. Until she achieves them, though, she needs to keep answering phones to keep kibble in her foster kittens’ mouths.

All of those dreams are shattered when she’s called in for a meeting with HR by the new and loathsome boss Xavier Adams. He can’t stand Vanessa’s dour looks and fires her on the spot, even though she’s incredibly competent at her job.

Vanessa’s friends Jane Delaney (recently fired by Xavier for similarly facile reasons) and Trisha Lam (whose job is on very shaky ground) rally around her. Though Vanessa wants to get on with her life, Xavier indicates that he’s going to block her attempt to qualify for unemployment benefits due to her reaction to her firing. Trisha has read The Art of War by Sun Tzu and all three women vow to use the ideas in the tome to take Xavier down. But is revenge really what Vanessa wants, given the possibility of her dream job – and a date with her hunky, cat-adoring unemployment rep – on the horizon?

This is such a delight of a novel, with plenty of fun to be had between the plotting and scheming, the building romance and Vanessa’s self-actualization. All of the novel’s individual parts work beautifully together, coming together for a fun, cohesive whole.

You can buy it here for 1.99.


Toni Anderson writes strong romantic suspense. This one is a good one. Here’s our review:

Pip West’s career as an investigative journalist might well be over following the recent publication of her story about police corruption that led to a dirty cop murdering his wife and kids before turning his gun on himself.  Devastated and burdened with guilt, Pip has fled her home in Florida and driven to rural Georgia, intending to stay with her best friend, Cindy – a research scientist at nearby Blake University – while she gets herself together and works out what she wants to do with the rest of her life.  Arriving at her friend’s remote cabin on Lake Allatoona, Pip is worried when she sees her Cindy’s car outside, but can find no trace of her.  Upstairs on the balcony, she sees something floating in the lake and is horrified to realise it’s Cindy.  Panicked and horrified, Pip manages to drag the body out of the water and to call 911 – but it’s too late.

Following the discovery of a terrorist cell in possession of weaponised anthrax, Special Agent Hunt Kincaid, WMD co-ordinator at the Atlanta field office of the FBI, has been tasked with reaching out to anyone in the area whose work involves the use of bacillus anthracis.  Intelligence suggests that this new strain has come from a US source, so Hunt and his counterparts throughout the US are being alerted and given similar tasks, but given the number of government facilities, universities and biotech companies in the area – including the Centre for Disease Control – the Atlanta office is the first on the case.

Hunt’s first stop is Blake University, where he intends to speak to the staff and students who work with the anthrax virus there.  His tour of the department is interrupted by news of the death of a PhD student who had been working on a new vaccine against the virus – and the timing is too much of a coincidence for him to ignore.  He heads out to Lake Allatoona where the local police tell him they suspect the death of the young woman – Cindy Resnick – to be drug related.  When her friend – the dark-haired young woman Hunt noticed immediately upon arriving at the scene –  insists Cindy never took drugs, Hunt takes the assertion with a pinch of salt; after all, this woman found the body and because of that, is currently at the top of the list of potential suspects should this prove to be a homicide.

Pip knows the handsome FBI agent is suspicious of her, but she’s too mired in grief and anger to care.  She knows Cindy wouldn’t – couldn’t – have committed suicide and she’s determined to find out the truth, but it won’t be easy.  After her last investigation, she’s wary of law-enforcement – and once the local cops find out about her exposé of police corruption, they’re not exactly queuing up to help her either.

Pip and Hunt pursue their own lines of enquiry for the first part of the book, their paths crossing mostly accidentally, each suspicious of the other and very cautious about sharing what they find out.  After a journalist stitched him up in a move that almost cost him his career, Hunt has no love for reporters, so he’s not well-disposed towards Pip – no matter that he can’t help the strong pull of attraction he feels towards her. But the more he sees of her, the more convinced he becomes that Pip had nothing to do with Cindy’s death – and Pip finds herself wanting to trust Hunt, even though she knows he subscribes to the police’s theory that Cindy’s death was, if not suicide, then helped along by her use of drugs.  But a second death – another scientist and friend of Cindy’s – also thought to be drug related, brings Hunt to the realisation that Pip has probably been right all along and that there’s more to her friend’s death than getting high and taking an ill-advised swim.

The suspense storyline is tightly-plotted and well-researched, the tension building gradually through its various twists and turns until reaching the final chapters, which really amp things up and propel us towards an exciting, high-stakes finale.  The romance is more of a slow burn, with Pip and Hunt gradually moving in ever decreasing circles around each other as they slowly learn to shed their suspicions and to work together, but this felt completely right given the circumstances and their past experiences.  I appreciated the absence of the over-the-top mental lusting that is so often present in today’s romance novels; Hunt and Pip are attracted to and aware of each other, yes, but there’s never any sense that the plot is being suspended while they mentally drool over one another’s perfect bodies.  I liked both characters, although I can’t deny that there’s something a bit stock-in-trade about both of them; Hunt is your classic ‘I don’t do relationships because I don’t like losing people’ type, and Pip is the ‘I had a shitty childhood and now I don’t trust easily’ one.  That said though, they’re relatable and engaging, and I particularly liked the flirtatious, playful side Hunt allowed out occasionally.  Pip’s grief is very well-handled, too – her sadness and feelings of guilt and uncertainty permeate the first part of the book in a subtle way, and I was pleased to see that she didn’t suddenly recover and start to act as though nothing had happened as the story progressed.

You can buy it for 0.99 here.


 

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