"This one won my heart"
Katie Macalister's first book NOBLE INTENTIONS was a sharp,
funny and so FRESH Regency Historical. I was eager to read
more from her. But then, I had to wait a year! Fortunately,
her next works are due out in rapid succession, so we will
not have to suffer again. I grew up with the oddball humor that delighted in the
quirkiness of the Brits. Katie Macalister understands this
and puts it on a showcase guarantee to have you HOWLING. To
say this book is a contemporary romance is to say the
Titanic was a ship. It is warm, loving, sexy and quirky
with a capital Q. Katie's freshness gives you a tale you
will not forget. She burrows a way into your heart and
leaves you so sorry when you have to put it down. Alexandra Freemar is a Yank on a two-month stay in London
to write her first romance book. Told in first person, it's
a little jarring for first few pages. Years ago, Gothics
were mostly in first person, but that style faded and first
person point of view is an oddity in today's market.
However, Katie wields first person with a razor sharp wit,
and you will soon be in the flow. Alix is a bit of a
failure at life. Twenty-nine, divorced and with the mother
from hell reminding her of all her failures, so she views
her writing this book as a make or break point in her life.
She does not have time for romance, though she is not
against a quick summer fling. Her landlady says she has MR.
PERFECT for Alix, but he won't be interested in a quick
fling. The next day she meets Detective Inspector Alexander Black,
a Scotland Yard detective in the Internet Squad who closes
down porn sites on the net. He lives in the apartment just
above Alix's and just happens to be the "Mr. Right" that
her landlady wanted to introduce her to, sure they are a
perfect match. They are instantly attracted to each other,
but having been hurt so many times in the past, Alix is
scared of how strongly she is falling in love with Alex.
Their romance is wickedly funny, steamy sexy and dead on.
Katie sprinkles the mix with warm and loving, strong
supporting character, that are as vivid as the leads, and
you end up wishing you could live in this zany apartment
building. But the romance is only half the joy. You actually get to
read Alix's 'WIP' (Work in Progress), some of the most
terrible purple prose ever put to pen as she drags her book
around London asking for everyone's opinions and input from
the grocery to her hairdresser, and learning in the
process 'too many cooks spoil the soup'. I saw one reviewer on another site say they got tired of
Alix's self-centeredness and I'm sorry they missed this
point. Alix's is a wounded, long-unloved bird and going
through healing and rebirth. This love is that once in a
lifetime BIG ONE and that is so scarey. She jumps at the
first excuse to push Alex away from her knowing if she
fails in this the loss will destroy her. Sure the readers
gets ticked at Alix, just as the other characters in the
book do! You see, it is not selfishness, but SURVIVAL, her
defense against being hurt yet once again. She is flawed
and is having to remake herself, to grow, so I applaud her
less than perfect heroine. It's a brilliant, witty romp that is just so original it
will go on my keeper shelf and be visited like an old
friend. My one fear, often Yanks do not 'understand' Brit
humor and just might miss what a gem this one is. Posted March 28, 2003
Reviewed by Deborah Macgillivray
Posted November 18, 2006
|
|
Alexandra Freemar should be in heaven--she's just been
handed everything she's ever wanted on a silver plate: a three month stay in London, the
time to write the book of her heart, and the chance to finally prove to her mother that
she's not the miserable failure her past indicates. Free-spirited, unconventional, and able to
find the absurd in almost any situation, Alix finds that heaven isn't what it's cracked up
to be when fate, in the form of a matchmaking landlady who promises to fix her up with her
perfect soul mate, hands her the devilishly handsome man who lives upstairs. Her perfect man?
Hardly! Her perfect man is not a workaholic, straight-laced detective inspector from Scotland Yard who
wouldn't recognize fun if it bit him on his (extremely
attractive) behind.
Alexander Black is a
man with a mission, and no one is going to distract him from
that, not even the uninhibited,
carefree American
who personifies everything he dislikes in a woman: she
belittles his devotion to work, insists on
dragging him into
the most unlikely of situations, exudes sexuality that makes
his mouth go dry whenever he's near
her, and teases him
with a brashness that's utterly foreign to him. But
underneath that sassy mouth and
devil-may-care
exterior, he senses a wounded woman who's calling out to
him, and try as he might, he just can't
refuse answering.
|
