savvyliterate's reviews
634 reviews

The magical fairy-tale of a Baltimore street cop and a bartender proved to be a little too out there for my tastes -- and I'm a fan of the In Death series where every excuse available is used to make Roarke a part of Eve's murder cases. The biggest drawback to this book is that while the characters are likable enough, this story needed to be far longer. There were some good plot threads I felt that didn't get fully developed enough: Mandy's issues with her self-esteem, her relationship with her family, etc. The intimacy was over-the-top. The ending was worthy of a cheesy action flick, but everything just fell flat overall.

I was very pleasantly surprised by this book. I wasn't sure what to think based on the title, but this turned out to be a surprisingly sweet and sexy story. This is a case where I loved all of the characters and was really pleased to see the titular Duchess and her husband be passionate and romantic several decades into their marriage. I know they get their own story, and I plan to be reading it in short order. My favorite character though, hands down, was the thieving cat Reggie. Probably because he's a mixture of two cats I am very familiar with myself!

A DNF. Turned out to be a bit too dry of a read for me, so I tucked it away as future research.

This was a brilliant book, and it was such a refreshing read coming off the spate of mediocre books I just finished. I think I'm really starting to become a Lorraine Heath fan, as I not only read one, but two of her books last night.

In "An Invitation to Seduction," we get the pairing of two minor characters from Heath's other books. We initially see them as children, though because I read them out of order, I read Richard's story before seeing him as a child. The sensuality was just lovely throughout the book, though my only quibble has to do with Kitty's inner conflict. There's really nothing shown in this book how Kitty's parentage caused her life to be any less full than it was, and her birth mother received her own happy ending. Maybe the answers to why Kitty views her parentage the way she does lies in that book. But, there's nothing here to ever suggest that Kitty was ostracized for being adopted. When Kitty does finally reach out to her birth mother, there's no response or resolution there. It just hangs. It's the only reason this book doesn't get a full five-star rating.

This book was OK, and while it did get an emotional reaction in some cases, the main romance itself just kind of fell flat at times. It's my personal preference, but I've never felt comfortable with the borderline cheating stories, even though in this case said romance was encouraged and even arranged.