Fools Rush In by Kristan Higgins

After reading Too Good To Be True and Just One of the Guys, I was sooo ready to settle in for a good time with this book. Mmmm...Not so much.

This is the story of Millie Barnes, a new doctor who moves back to her hometown to live and work. Her plan is to snag the guy of her dreams - Joe Carpenter. She's crushed on him since 9th grade. In a stalker way. I will admit I was warned, the first words in the book are: "I'm a stalker. The good kind." (Is there a good kind of stalker? Really?)

While the writing was good and I liked the characters, I couldn't get past Millie's stalking. She knew when he went to the post office, she knew where he'd be working, she went to his house at 5am to be sure of what time he left for work so she could jog by when he'd be leaving. She got a dog so their dogs could play together. If this was a guy doing this to a girl it would not be okay. And her friends enabled her!

Eventually she did catch Joe's eye, and surprise, surprise, he wasn't what she thought he'd be. Gorgeous? Yes. But Joe the Person was nothing like Joe the Fantasy. I actually felt bad for Joe.

Millie's older sister, Trish, was just evil. I did like her brother-in-law (Trish's ex husband) Sam, and Trish and Sam's son, Danny. Eventually, as Millie realizes Joe's not what she thought, she realizes Sam is everything she thought Joe was. But she knows she can't fall for her sister's ex-husband, can she? Oh yeah - it's possible - and I will say the way Trish found out was totally unexpected!

I think I would have liked this story without the stalker bit. I liked Millie's friends, even if they did enable her weird obsession with Joe, and they were there for her when she really needed them. Just because I didn't care for this particular book won't stop me from reading more of Ms. Higgins' books - her writing is just that good.

Red and Scarlett by Jordan Summers

Red is set in the year 2160, 150 years after the last world war. This war apparently decimated almost everything, leaving the earth pretty barren and desolate. It also left the Others, genetically-enhanced humans who were created as "super soldiers" (from what I can tell, vampires and shapeshifters). After the war the government was not able to dispose of them all and they live in secret. This future society is very Big-Brotherish, with videocoms and traffic control cameras and people having to be registered to live in "pureblood" society.

Our heroine, Gina, has been having weird dreams where she wakes up with blood on her clothes but doesn't remember going out. Gina is an international police-type who comes upon a murder scene that her department writes off as an animal attack but she knows it's not. She takes a few days off to travel to a border town to investigate. She ends up asking the Sheriff, Morgan, for help questioning the citizens of the town and an attraction builds, which they both fight. Another woman's body is found, and Gina doesn't know it but a 3rd body has been found. Morgan knows something about Gina she doesn't know about herself, and he is having a hard time controlling his increasing lust for her. As they investigate the murders, they realize there's more going on than meets the eye.

Scarlett starts out with Morgan and Gina together, working on her powers, and it's not going well. He tells her to be patient but she's frustrated because she can't control them. Then, Morgan sees an add on television for a clone woman and child - his wife and child who died many years ago. He's got to leave Gina in town to go find this clone lab and destroy the samples - he doesn't want his wife cloned to be used as a whore. While Morgan is gone, weird things are going on in town. Gina is being framed for murders and the townspeople are accusing her of cheating on Morgan. The only people who are standing by her side are a few members of her new tactical team and a vampire. Meanwhile, Morgan is not having any luck obtaining the clone samples and is realizing there are some weird things going on at the company.

I have to say, truthfully, I was not thrilled with these books. In the first book I found Gina to be an inconsistent character - tough as nails but she cries in Morgan's arms when she has a nightmare? I found myself having to read sentences twice and scratching my head, and the foreshadowing felt forced. I enjoyed Scarlet more, the characters were rounded out a bit better, and the story flowed well. I will say that I'm not a big fan of future stories, so that could be part of my problem. I wish I would have checked them out at the library instead of buying them.

Sleepless in Scotland by Karen Hawkins

I picked this up at B&N because I wanted a good, sexy Highland romance. What I got was a Highland romance. It wasn't bad, don't get me wrong. It was okay. Possibly part of the problem is that it is the 2nd in a series and I haven't read the first.

Catriona Hurst lives in the country with her family. Her twin sister, Caitlyn, is in London for the season, and word has reached Catriona that Caitlyn has been acting up in an unladylike manner. Apparently Caitlyn made a bet with Alex MacLean that he would ask her to marry him, and she plans to win. Catriona hurries to London to stop her sister before she makes a huge mistake and ends up ruining her reputation. When she arrives, Caitlyn is already gone. Catriona learns that Caitlyn's plan is to climb into Alex's carriage and wait until they've been gone long enough that when she is discovered he will have no choice but to propose to save her reputation. If that isn't bad enough, she plans to say no!

Catriona rushes out to look for her sister and finds Alex's carriage at an Inn changing horses. She climbs into the carriage to grab her sister and put a stop to her nonsense, but she finds the carriage empty. Then it starts to pull away, with Catriona still in it! After some time, Alex gets into the carriage and tells her he knows what's going on and he won't fall for it. Catriona tries to tell him she's Caitlyn's twin, and that there's been a misunderstanding, but he won't listen. It's not until much, much later, when Catriona's uncle pulls them over, that he understands the truth. The other problem is that it's not Alex, but Alex's brother, Hugh, that has been with the carriage.

Of course, Catriona's uncle demands they marry, as society has already heard what happens and her reputation will be in tatters. Three days later they are married, and she goes home to Scotland with him. He tells her they will live there for a few weeks, until the scandal dies down, then she will return to her home and they will live their lives separately. While Catriona is not happy about being married to this stranger, she is even less happy with his idea of how their marriage will be. Then, on top of that, when she arrives at his home, his three daughters are there (he's never been married)!

Things continue to go downhill for her. I found Hugh was a very blah character - he was just ambivalent about everything. He didn't want her involved in his work raising horses. He didn't want her interacting with his daughters, as they had a history of being abandoned and abused and he didn't want them to grow attached to Catriona just to have her leave again. Due to their abusive history, the girls were awful to Catriona - they played pranks and tried to get Hugh to send her away. It seemed to me the only time he wanted Catriona involved was in the bedroom.
Needless to say, Catriona was lonely and homesick.

Also, Hugh's family was cursed in such a way that when they were upset they control the weather, and I think he did get mad enough a time or two to cause that to happen. Once was during a terrific fight with Catriona about her place in his home and his life and with his daughters. This "talent" was just a weird side-note until near the end of the book when it came in handy.

As I said before, it wasn't a bad book, the plot was good, I just found that I really didn't care what happened to the characters. There were some secondary characters that might have a good storyline, but for this book, eh.

Patricia Brigg' Cry Wolf

As I mentioned previously, I've given J the first Mercy Thompson book to read. I really enjoyed this series and I think it's a good one for a guy (no sex). Once I'd given it to him, however, I wanted to read it again myself. Instead, I decided to read her Alpha & Omega book, Cry Wolf.

Let me start by saying that I love Mercy's world, and her werewolf and vampire friends. I enjoyed the glimpses of Bran (the Marrok of North America's werewolves) and his family in Mercy's story and felt like I would know what was going on in the Alpha & Omega story, which I did. Cry Wolf is the story of Bran's son, Charles, and his new mate, Anna. Apparently Anna is a relatively new wolf who was abused by her pack and rescued by Charles. Upon returning to Charles' home, trouble comes up and Bran sends Charles and Anna to handle it. There's a powerful witch involved and the future of not only the pack but all the North American werewolves is in jeopardy.

While I enjoyed the story, I prefer Mercy's story to Charles and Anna's story. The Mercy series is definately a keeper, but I probably will not keep this book. I will, of course, read the 2nd installment of the series when it comes out in August (I think it's August), but didn't feel the connection to the characters like I did with Mercy's books; which is sort of weird considering some of the characters are the same. Bran was actually my favorite character in this story, even though he's not the main character.

Angels' Blood by Nalini Singh

I've not read anything by Nalini Singh before. I know she has a very popular psy-changeling series (I'm not even sure what that means), but this is her first book for me.

Angels' Blood is a story of angels, vampires, and a vampire hunter. In this reality, vampires are created by angels and are bound to the angels for 100 years. Sometimes they try to escape before their time is up and that's where the vampire hunters come in. Elena is a vampire hunter called by an archangel, Raphael, to capture what she thinks is a vampire but turns out to be a rogue archangel. There is quite a bit of sexual attraction between Elena and Raphael; he's an archangel used to giving orders and she's quite the rebel who refuses to take orders.

I enjoyed the book but it's not a keeper for me. It took awhile for me to get into the story; I enjoyed the middle but by the end I was ready for it to be over. I can't really pinpoint what about it I didn't care for, but it just didn't reach out and grab me. There were no Too Stupid To Live moments, but she just seemed be obstinate for no good reason. Also, there was quite a bit of "remembered painful past" that the author never got into. That was kind of frustrating.