Under His Skin

Rating:
Summary: So-so romantic anthology (2 1/2 stars)...
Review: I picked up this romantic anthology last summer on a whim. I'd decided not to review it when I realized that these stories were reprints and had been around for a long time. I was cleaning up my library, ready to give some books away to friends, when I came about Under His Skin again. Despite the mediocrity of this anthology, I somewhat enjoyed Lori Foster's Outrageous. It is the story of a young woman's quest to find the person who had sold a gun that had backfired and almost killed her brother. But in doing so she almost blows Judd Sander's cover. He, too, is searching for the person selling illegal weapons. He reluctantly accepts to help Emily. However, it won't be easy keeping his hands off the beautiful woman. The other two novellas -- Carla Neggers's Bewitching and Linda Lael Miller's Snowflakes on the Sea -- were ho hum at best. I didn't even bother to finish reading Snowflakes.

All in all, this is a mediocre anthology. Harlequin should have reprinted stronger novellas. Lori Foster is one of the best soft romantica writers of this time. I enjoyed Outrageous, even though the aforementioned novella isn't one of Foster's best efforts (this is one of her early works). If you're looking for soft romantica to read on the beach, I'd advise you to check out the Kensington Brava novels and anthologies instead. This one just isn't good enough...

Rating:
Summary: Taking the good with the bad.
Review: This reprint of 3 stories is redeemed by the inclusion of "Outrageous" by Lori Foster (pub. 1997) and also by the originally-written novella "Bewitching" by Carla Neggers (pub. 1993).

Unfortunately, the sad, sorry mess of Linda Lael Miller's "Snowflakes on the Sea" (pub. 1984) might be enough to put some readers off if they take the first story in the book as an indication of the quality of the latter two. Miller's story is a disjointed story with the protagonists repeating the same patterns again and again. Miller's female lead character Mallory is a sap - I found little to sympathize or empathize with in Mallory. The story wanders around until it just seems to finally come to a conclusion just to bring things to an end, and an unsatisfying end, at that.

That said, I would recommend this book for Foster's (always a treat) and Negger's novellas, however overall I can only give this book 3 stars because of the amount of paper wasted by "Snoflakes on the Sea", the longest novella in this collection.