Priority Male (Return To Sender) (Intrigue , No 478)

Rating:
Summary: A Painfully Bad Book
Review: In the first three pages of this book, Jasmine Ross' house is set on fire, Jasmine receives a long-lost letter revealing the identity of her father, and she goes to his home and is informed that he's dead. By the end of Chapter One, the hero has offered her a job (since she ran a company out of her house) and a place to stay, even though he doesn't know her in the least. At this point, I'm thinking, "Woah! I'm all for fast openings, but this is ridiculous." The entire book unfolds like that, with Kearney throwing one implausible event after another at us with no sense of narrative tension or rhythm. (Jasmine's standing on the sidewalk watching her house burn and the mailman just _happens_ to walk by at that exact moment with the letter that's been missing for 25 years. Uh huh.) The romantic subplot has Jasmine falling for her father's attorney, Rand Sinclair. Well, falling might be giving Kearney too much credit, since it's less than 100 pages into it (and Jasmine's only been there one day) before our heroine sighs that she's in love with this man. Again, that was fast. It also doesn't leave for much else to happen for the rest of the book. The bad guy couldn't be more obvious, and that goes double for the revelations about Jasmine's parents that allow for the required happy ending. Some of the moments where someone appears to be gaslighting Jasmine are suitably creepy, though far too many of them are just dumb. (If someone tells you not to lose a key, would you leave it in the attic door and walk away? If so, you deserve to come back and find the key missing and the door shut. Duh.) Kearney has proven she can write some good books (check out "Lullaby Deception" on that count) but this certainly isn't one of them. Obvious, predictable, underwritten, and stunningly absurd, "Priority Male" is bad in every sense of the word.

Rating:
Summary: Great Read!
Review: Sue Kearney delivers again. I loved the hero in this one and the action was non-stop. Jasmine and Rand and the tight plot kept me involved from the beginning. Put this one on your "to be read list." It's another winner!

Rating:
Summary: A family full of secrets, lies and "relative" weirdness.
Review: When your family wants you dead, where to you turn? Too bad you can't choose your relatives. Jasmine doesn't know if she's done herself any favors by discovering her family. Fortunately, there's one man she wants to trust more than the others, especially since he's not a relative, and she's falling in love with him despite her habit of mistrusting everyone. You'll fall in love with his consistent character and level-headed approach to solving murder and mayhem. And his gentle, understanding approach to love. Oh, yes...and a very sexy approach, too.