Reviewed by: BigAl
Genre: Romance
Approximate word count: 85-90,000 words
Availability
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Author:
After
walking away from her career as a business banker to pursue writing full-time,
Erica Lucke Dean moved from the hustle and bustle of the big city to a small
tourist town in the North Georgia Mountains where she lives in a 90-year-old
haunted farmhouse with her workaholic husband, her 180 lb lap dog, and at least
one ghost.
For more, visit the author's website.
Description:
“Banker
Katie James has a serious thing for romance novels. She’d almost rather settle
for a fictional boyfriend than risk her heart on a flesh-and-blood man.
Besides, the only real guy she’s remotely interested in is her rich,
unattainable client, the mysterious Cooper Maxwell.
Looking
less like the ultra-conservative man she knows and more like a drop-dead sexy
character from one of her books, Cooper crashes Katie’s 29th birthday party.
But one too many drinks lands Katie in uncharted territory… Cooper’s bedroom!
Drunk on
love, Katie dives headfirst into the relationship only to discover that Cooper
is keeping secrets… dangerous ones. As if things couldn’t get worse, her
meddling mother makes a surprise visit, digging up a whole new set of problems.
Who would
have guessed having an assassin for a boyfriend would be the least of her
worries?”
Appraisal:
Romance
novels have a basic formu … no, let’s call it something else. Time tested
patterns. The basic blueprint is boy meets girls. Sparks fly (or sometimes just
the opposite at first, but the sparks come before long). Then, we have the big
misunderstanding (probably due to poor communication) and the couple seems headed
their separate ways. Last, something causes them to realize they misunderstood
each other, get back together and, go riding into the sunset. (Actually that
last part is a Western. I wanted to make sure you were paying attention.
Replace with “live happily ever after”)
But really,
all novels fit a pattern. We’re so aware of it with Romance because of the
relatively small number of templates for a novel; this is by far the most
popular one. However, this means that for the story to feel fresh, an author
has to come up with great characters and situations. They need to feel like
real people. The situations have to be realistic. In To Katie With Love, Erica Lucke Dean came up with some great
characters.
Katie is a
character who should feel familiar to a big part of the target audience. In
fact, many will see something of themselves in Katie. Other than the obvious
gender difference, I did. She’s an avid reader, introverted, and will often
choose a vicarious adventure in a romance novel over the alternatives on her
social calendar. The people she works with are quirky, yet real enough to
remind me of past co-workers. And her bank job gives her plenty of chances to
meet men with both money and looks, especially the mysterious Cooper Maxwell.
The
situations Katie gets herself into seem almost larger than life, yet not so
much as to have me disbelieving. I was surprised multiple times as the story
was working its way to a conclusion, never guessing the answer to the big
question every reader is going to have by that point, nor guessing how (or even
whether) Katie was going to get that ride into the sunset.
FYI:
A small
amount of adult language and some mild adult situations.
Format/Typo Issues:
No
significant issues.
Rating: ***** Five Stars
Rating: ***** Five Stars
1 comment:
The formula is often there and what I find missing most is an interesting career to make the main interesting! There's so much chicklit out there with mains who really aren't interesting people.
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