Reading Frenzy

I'm getting a nice break from real life this week, and I've been reading like crazy. Today, I devoured Blue-Eyed Devil by Lisa Kleypas. Just like it's predecessor Sugar Daddy, I loved this book. Loved, loved, LOVED IT! I couldn't put it down. Haven Travis, a Houston socialite and battered wife, falls for Hardy Cates, a man who has known tremendous success in the oil business but underneath it all, he is still the roughneck he once was growing up in a trailer park. I like how Lisa Kleypas focused on the sister of her hero from Sugar Daddy. I liked how Hardy did something horrible in Sugar Daddy but I loved him just the same in Blue-Eyed Devil. I'm hoping the next installment, Smooth Talking Stranger, features another of Haven's brothers. Kleypas, known for her sizzling historicals, has made a wonderful leap to contemporary, and she writes in first person. Often I find first person hard to read, mostly because I miss seeing the hero's point of view. However, Kleypas does a masterful job with first person. I highly recommend both Sugar Daddy and Blue-Eyed Devil.

I also read Lori Foster's My Man Michael, the latest in her SBC fighters series. I've loved most of the other SBC books even though I find fighting of any kind to be a major turnoff, but this one was just so-so for me. I wasn't expecting the paranormal element that appeared out of nowhere in this book. Michael "Mallet" Manchester has been badly injured in a car accident, and his career as a top SBC fighter is finished. Enter Kayli Raine from 200 years in the future and this is where this story just got weird for me. Usually, I have tremendous problems suspending disbelief enough to go along with anything paranormal but something kept me reading this book. I decided later it was the sizzling chemistry between Michael and Kayli. I skipped a lot of the stuff about the conflict in Kayli's colony that only Michael could fix in exchange for her mending his shattered leg as she transported him into the future. Hmmm... Okay. Their romance was fun to read, but I found the resolution of how he managed to remain 200 years into the future with her at the end of the book to be too pat. I've read mixed reviews about this book, and I can see how regular Foster readers would be taken aback by getting something they didn't expect in My Man Michael. She's known as a contemporary writer and this book is a major departure. However, I still love her and will continue to read her future books.

Next up is Lori Wilde's All of Me. I read one of Lori's recent Blaze books and loved it, so I'm looking forward to this one! I loaned my friend Kristan Higgins' latest, Too Good to be True, to my friend, but hope to get to that one this week, too. I'll let you know how they are!